Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks during a news conference against a backdrop of medical supplies at the Javits Center that will house a temporary hospital | AP Photo Cuomo calls on Trump to build field hospitals throughout the city

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is calling on President Donald Trump to approve the construction of 4,000 additional hospital beds across the city.

The governor said he wants to build temporary hospitals ahead of the apex of Covid-19 patients crushing the hospitals, expected to take place within three weeks.


“I want to have one in every borough,” Cuomo said at Friday’s press conference at the Javits Center in Manhattan.

He added that he wants to ensure that “everyone equally is being helped and is being protected.”

The state is looking at the New York Expo Center in the Bronx, the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, the Port Authority-owned Brooklyn Cruise Terminal and the College of Staten Island to set up temporary hospitals similar to the one set up at the Javits Center.

New York officials are also considering converting dorms and hotels into Covid-19 units and beginning to stockpile equipment, Cuomo said.

“We’ve been gathering equipment from everywhere we can — [personal protective equipment], most important piece of equipment for us are ventilators — and we’re shopping literally around the globe to put it all in place,” the governor said. “We are creating a stockpile of this equipment so that when and if the apex hits, we can deploy equipment from the stockpile to whatever region of the state or whatever hospital needs it.”

Cuomo declined to comment on Trump’s statement Thursday night on Fox News that he doesn’t believe states “need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators.”

“Let me paraphrase it the way I want to paraphrase it, because I don’t want to answer this question directly,” Cuomo joked to a reporter. “Yes, there is a stockpile, because that’s where [the ventilators are] supposed to be because we don’t need them yet. We need them for the apex.”

“All the projections say you could have an apex needing 140,000 beds and about 40,000 ventilators," Cuomo added. "Those are numbers. Not 'I think, I feel, I believe.' ... We’re following the data and the science, and that’s what the data and the science says.”

New York has 44,635 Covid-19 cases and 519 deaths, according to the latest numbers from the governor’s office.

“That is going to continue to go up, and that is the worst news I could possibly tell the people of New York,” Cuomo said.

"The rate of the increase is slowing, but the number of cases is still going up," he added.

