Some have combined wards: At Lincoln Medical Center in the Bronx the obstetrics and pediatric patients were placed in the same wing, and those in the psychiatric emergency room were transferred to another section of the hospital to make room for those afflicted by the virus. Moving psychiatric patients is particularly delicate, since rooms cannot contain any items that would facilitate suicide, Katz said. Redlener said pandemic planning is often put on the back burner of local and federal preparations with more immediate problems taking precedence, and New York is no exception.
Hospitals are now facing a shortage of ventilators. Some patients who need to go on life support don’t wake up, and the hospitals and city morgues are already filling – three weeks before the state’s expected virus apex. The state is working toward centralizing purchase orders for ventilators and coordinating with other states to avoid paying inflated prices due to bidding wars after pleas to the Trump administration fell on deaf ears .
On March 1, when New York City recorded its first confirmed case of the virus, the city’s health department had on hand , (N) (face masks, million surgical tasks , more than , gloves, more than 50, (gowns and 3, Ventilators, mayoral spokesperson Laura Feyer said. The The lack of protective equipment has left some workers to improvise, fashioning makeshift face shields and using trash bags for additional coverage, regardless of where they work, said Patricia Kane, executive director of the New York State Nurses Association. NYU Langone took away bins of hand sanitizer, surgical masks and N 101 masks that are usually accessible to staff at the beginning of March, telling employees they were rationing supplies to prepare for an influx of coronavirus patients, said one nurse who also requested anonymity out of fear for retaliation. The hospital is encouraging nurses to use N 101 masks and protective face shields for a week unless they’re visibly soiled; workers put their PPE in paper bags at the end of each shift.
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