Overview of the National Tennis Center in New York. Home of the U.S. Open to be converted to a field hospital

NEW YORK — The tennis complex that hosts the U.S. Open will by next week become a field hospital to treat coronavirus patients — part of a race to build more beds and relieve New York City's health care facilities, where a top official said all indicators are “flashing red.”

The USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens will host a 350-bed hospital, Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a visit to the site Tuesday — and unlike other emergency hospitals opened in the city so far, it will be able to treat patients suffering from Covid-19.


The number of coronavirus cases in New York City surpassed 40,000 on Tuesday — a quarter of the cases in the entire country — and 932 New Yorkers have died.

“We all know we are racing against time right now,” de Blasio said.

The city has begun to receive more aid from the federal government, but is still far short of the equipment it needs. The mayor appealed for oral surgeons, plastic surgeons, and veterinarians to turn over their ventilators to the city.

“We need it now. It should not be sitting there doing nothing. This is a war effort. Everybody needs to contribute,” de Blasio said.

The tennis facility will take patients from Elmhurst Hospital, which has been overwhelmed with gravely ill coronavirus patients. But it will not be able to treat people sick enough to be in the ICU.

“The indicators I’m looking at are flashing red,” said Dr. Eric Wei, vice president of NYC Health + Hospitals, which runs Elmhurst and 10 other public hospitals. “I’ve practiced emergency medicine for a long time, and I’m seeing things I could never have imagined.”

Multiple city hospitals are so full that patients are waiting in the emergency room because there are no beds available for them once they’re admitted, he said.

Elmhurst, which has intubated 42 patients in the past four days, is now offloading patients with other ailments to focus almost exclusively on coronavirus. Trauma patients are being moved as soon as they are stabilized. Besides Elmhurst, Queens hospital, Kings County, Coney Island, and Woodhull hospitals in Brooklyn, and Jacobi and Lincoln hospitals in the Bronx are all surging with Covid-19 patients.

If the crisis has passed, officials still hope that the U.S. Open can be played at the tennis center in late August.

“It seems so trivial,” said complex operations director Daniel Zausner. “Hopefully, we’ll be in a position five months from today to see players actually practicing on the courts right behind us.”

New York City has also begun to shut down playgrounds to prevent crowding that could spread the illness. De Blasio has resisted calls to shut all playgrounds, but said Tuesday he has ordered 10 to be padlocked because they were repeatedly found to be too crowded.

“They will be shut down, they will be locked, there will be signs put up, there will be enforcement,” de Blasio said.

The Jacob Javits and Raoul Wallenberg playgrounds in Manhattan, Watson Gleason in the Bronx, Middleton, Brighton, and two playgrounds at Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, Mauro in Queens, and two at Clove Lakes Park on Staten Island will be closed until further notice.

Last week, the city took down 80 basketball hoops at courts where people were violating social distancing rules.

De Blasio also announced that the city will postpone a tax lien sale, where it has planned to sell off property for unpaid property taxes or water bills. It was scheduled for May but will be pushed at least until August.

“We understand right now people’s lives have been turned upside down and they don’t have money to pay bills,” de Blasio said.