The state passed 1,000 deaths, as confirmed virus cases approached 60,000.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said that 750 beds on the U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort, which just docked in Manhattan, would be put to use “immediately.”
A naval hospital ship has docked in Manhattan.
A Navy hospital ship that docked in Manhattan this morning is expected to provide relief to the city’s overwhelmed hospitals by freeing up beds so that they can treat more coronavirus patients.
The 1,000-bed ship, the Comfort, with 12 operating rooms, a medical laboratory and more than 1,000 Navy officers, arrived at Pier 90 off West 50th Street in Manhattan just before 11 a.m., and Mayor Bill de Blasio said that 750 of its beds will be put to use “immediately.”
The Comfort will treat patients who do not have the virus. The city’s hospitals are now so full that paramedics in the field are being forced to make on-the-spot judgments about who gets to go to the hospital and who is left behind, perhaps to die.
“This is like adding another hospital here in New York City,” Mayor de Blasio said. “It’s such a boost to see the military arrive to help us out.”
Still, he acknowledged that the city’s health care system would need far more support.
“We started with around 20,000 working beds in New York City,” Mr. de Blasio said. “We have to get over 60,000 by the beginning of May according to what we know now — like adding 40 U.S. Comforts. And that’s the magnitude of what we’re talking about.”
Along the Hudson, people gathered in bunches to watch the ship arrive — in apparent violation of social distancing rules.
The Comfort, a converted supertanker, was used as a floating base for rescue workers in New York after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
In sending the ship, Navy officials acknowledge that they have taken a risk. They insist that they are doing everything short of Saran-wrapping the ship to try to keep it virus-free, aware that all it would take is one positive case to turn the Comfort from rescue ship to floating petri dish.
“We will establish a bubble around this ship to make sure we’re doing everything to keep it out,” said Capt. Joseph O’Brien, commodore of the military’s Task Force New York City.
Separately, officials have been transforming the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan into a 1,000-bed hospital. Officials with the Army Corps of Engineers have said the hospital should be ready to open today.
