ALBANY—New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on March 15 predicted a tidal wave of COVID-19 patients will crush hospital capacity in his state amid the viral pandemic now at more than 700 cases there.
“We are looking at a new war that no one has seen before,” Cuomo said. “We have never fought a virus like this with this potential consequence, so plan forward.”
Southern Rockland County is an area of concern, Cuomo said. A 64-year-old Suffern, N.Y., resident became the second patient to die in the state on March 12, posthumously testing positive for COVID-19.
In Bergen County, the Township of Teaneck has asked all residents to quarantine, with 18 cases confirmed there as of March 14, and 31 county wide.
“Take a deep breath,” Cuomo said in an hour-long noontime news conference. “People are going to get sick. Many, many, many people will get the virus: 40 percent of the population; 50 percent of the population; 60 percent of the population,” said Cuomo. “80 percent of the population will self resolve.”
He urged calm amongst the citizens, but said hospitals need to urgently increase capacity.
“My opinion—not science based: You will not be able to flatten the curve to avoid the wave; you will be short thousands of ICU beds, thousands of ventilators,” said Cuomo. “The only way to prevent that, today, given this time constraint, is to deploy the Army Corps of Engineers and use that capacity to retrofit existing facilities to free up hospital beds. A decision is easy when you have no options. And here, this nation has no options.”
Cuomo said only hundreds of Intensive Care Unit beds among the state’s 3,000 units are currently available; they’re already 80 percent occupied, he said.
“The overwhelming crush is going to be on the ICU beds,” Cuomo said, using imagery of a tidal wave about to sweep over the hospital system.
While most can recover from COVID-19 at home, just like the flu, Cuomo said fear surrounds those who have underlying illnesses.
“Why are ICU beds important? Because the people who come in—vulnerable populations, older people, underlying illnesses, respiratory problems—they need the ICU beds; they need the ventilators; they need the machines that breathe for them,” he said. “Three-thousand [ICU beds] goes very, very quickly on any projection of these numbers.”
He urged America to learn lessons from countries already dealing with widespread pandemic.
“China, South Korea, Italy: It’s the same lesson, over and over again—you get into trouble when the health care system can’t manage that rate of intake,” Cuomo said.
He said density control of people—limiting gatherings and social distancing—will help slow the spread, and he also called upon the federal government to speed approvals of automated testing, saying automating labs can speed up the process from 30 manual tests per day to 1,000 automated tests per day.
“If you have too high an amount of people sick at the same time, when they descend on the hospital system, you will overwhelm the hospital system. That’s the issue here,” said Cuomo.
