Elmhurst Hospital Center is being provided with critically needed supplies and resources to help with the overwhelming influx of coronavirus patients the hospital experienced last week, as Mayor Bill de Blasio warned the city could be out of ventilators and other medical equipment without more federal help by Sunday, April 5.

“Elmhurst Hospital and our NYC Health + Hospital system are at the center of this epidemic,” said Mayor de Blasio in a March 29 press release. “We’re in a state of war, but we cannot go into battle without ammunition,” he said, adding, “To those who are on the frontlines: Your city is behind you, and more help is on the way.”

“In the last week we have seen real (federal) support,” said de Blasio on Sunday, March 29. “The fact is we remain the epicenter of this crisis – the numbers are staggering,” he said, adding the goal was to have 400 more ventilators by April 1. The city has now received 2,500 ventilators from the federal government and is distributing them to hospitals as needed.

The city is also distributing 250,000 surgical masks donated by the United Nations (UN) to help protect healthcare workers. Elmhurst Hospital has received a total of 21,000 N95 masks, 18,000 head coverings and 2,000 booties, 221,000 surgical gloves, 33,000 face masks, 17,500 gowns, and 1,665 face shields.

On March 29, Governor Andrew Cuomo extended his March 20 executive order directing nonessential workers to work from home and the requirement to maintain 6 feet of distance in public for an additional two weeks through April 15, but the month of March was very hard on the borough of Queens.

Since the first coronavirus death was confirmed on March 14, a total of 33,714 cases have been recorded citywide with 776 deaths, according to the New York City Department of Health as of Sunday, March 29 at 4:15 pm, and was expected to have surpassed 1,000 by Monday, March 30. Queens had almost a third (10,737 or 32 percent) of the total and suffered the greatest loss of life in the city with 253 deaths.

On March 28, Governor Cuomo announced that the federal government has approved Aqueduct Racetrack as one of four new sites for temporary hospitals to be constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers, adding 1,000 beds in Queens.

“There is no state in the nation that is better prepared or better mobilized to combat this virus than New York,” said Governor Cuomo. “The number of cases is still going up towards the apex, and the development of new, faster tests will be critical in flattening this curve, getting people back to work and returning to normalcy,” he said at his Sunday morning press briefing on March 29.

Cuomo reported 59,513 coronavirus cases with 965 deaths statewide occurring in 44 of New York State’s 46 counties, including the five counties of New York City. “New York is the number one impacted state,” he said. New Jersey, with 13,386 cases and 161 deaths, is a distant second. The first coronavirus case was identified in the US in Washington state on January 21, spreading to all 50 states and the District of Columbia by March 17. There are now 139,523 cases and 2,433 deaths as of March 29.