As COVID-19 cases continue to rise, Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered hospitals to increase beds by 25% and staffing.

What You Need To Know

  • Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered hospitals to increase bed capacity by 25% and urges retired health care workers to return to service

  • St. Joseph's Hospital expanded their their negative pressure unit and follows spring plan to prepare

  • New restrictions and more shutdowns will take place by next week if hospital rates increase

 

“We have over 500 available beds right now,” said McMahon. “We have the ability to meet the moment at this time, assuming things don’t get worse.”

Space isn’t a problem for St. Joseph’s Health. Emergency Management and Disaster Preparedness Manager Joseph Bick says they expanded their negative pressure unit to treat about 70 patients so far.

“We keep converting units to negative pressure,” said Bick. “Ideally, you want to care for the patients in negative pressure right now. I think we have upwards of a capacity for 100 in negative pressure.”

Cuomo is also urging retired health care workers to return to service.

“This will be good as far as developing a backup volunteer list in an event we do get into hospital surge,” said McMahon. “If we get to that point where we’re staffing the surge beds, it’s going to be a challenge.”

Bick says staffing has always been an issue, but adds says the hospital has had strategies since the spring and continues to prepare.

“We’ve centralized our scheduling of nurses and support staff, and we are really following the plan we put in place,” said Bick. “We have looked outside the hospital at professional staff that works for us and take in a certain percentage of those.”

Cuomo says if the region’s hospital rate does not stabilize within five days, indoor dining will drop to 25% capacity outside of New York City. If it shows signs of hitting 90% capacity within three weeks, then the region will close down.