Patients in an emergency room | AP Photo New York City hospitals prepare for patient surge

NEW YORK — New York City’s hospitals are girding themselves for a flood of new coronavirus cases next week, even as the city’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, on Friday lauded the statewide clampdown Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued Friday.

The statewide measure is designed to slow the spread of Covid-19. But thus far, confirmed infections are growing by the hour. Close to 1,000 people have been hospitalized in the city, with hundreds in intensive care units. The number of confirmed cases continued to rise to 5,683 with 43 fatalities as of 6 p.m. Even that number is largely meaningless because more tests are being conducted each day and scores of infected residents are never swabbed in the first place.


De Blasio said Friday he believes the city is prepared to deal with the crunch through March. Health officials have indicated there are potentially 20,000 beds being prepped, and the Army Corps of Engineers has pledged to build 10,000 additional beds in the coming weeks. But come April, both space and protective equipment for health care staff could dry up.

After the mayor had for days called on the state to institute a shelter-in-place order, Cuomo took the plunge and, while dismissing the term "shelter in place" as alarmist, took many of the measures de Blasio had sought. All nonessential businesses were ordered to close, nonessential gatherings were prohibited and New Yorkers were told to stay in their homes except for necessary sojourns or solitary exercise.

“This action by the state is very new," de Blasio said Friday evening. "And again I agree with it fully.”

Because the Covid-19 illness typically takes between seven to nine days to require hospitalization — which will be the reality for roughly 10 percent of those infected — Friday’s order will have little effect on the number of New Yorkers who show up at hospitals next week. And the figures could be staggering.

A recent analysis from economist and data scientist Michael Donnelly suggests that hospitals will face 3,000 cases by Tuesday, 8,000 by Friday and will surpass 15,000 by early the following week.

“The important takeaway is: We are in deep trouble,” he said in an interview.

The mayor said Friday that he believes the city is prepared to deal with the crunch through March. Health officials have indicated that there are potentially 20,000 beds being prepared to deal with the crisis, and the Army Corps of Engineers has pledged to build 10,000 additional beds in the coming weeks. But come April, both space and protective equipment for health care staff could dry up.

In some cases, it already has. The New York State Nurses Association has called on Cuomo to flex his executive power to protect front-line hospital staff, many of whom are falling ill at an alarming rate.

"It is our understanding that nationally we will need at least several billion N95 disposable respirators, billions of surgical mask, reusable respirators, protective gowns, face shields, goggles and other similar equipment," the union wrote in a letter shared with POLITICO.

“It’s a disaster,” said Dr. Conrad Fischer, residency program director in internal medicine at Brookdale University Medical Center, told POLITICO Friday. “We just had a half dozen staff just test positive. We have 17 ventilators left in the institution. Some staff can't come because they’re getting wiped out.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio has spent days haranguing the federal government, pleading for three million N95 masks, 50 million surgical masks, 15,000 ventilators and 25 million sets of gowns, gloves and other protective equipment. At a press conference in Washington D.C. Friday afternoon, President Donald Trump said that he was only dealing with Cuomo.

“I've had the opportunity to work with previous presidents," de Blasio said Friday evening in response. "None of them in a million years would have thought — 'You don't talk to the mayor of the nation's largest city when it is the epicenter of a global crisis and how it is affecting the United States of America' — it's inconceivable."

While the city awaits supplies, the mayor continued to urge New Yorkers not to gather in crowds and stay home from work. Some in the NYPD are taking that advice to heart, with a concerning number of officers calling out sick in recent days.

"I don’t like what I’ve seen the last four days. We had been holding steady,” said Police Commissioner Dermot Shea, Friday. “We can, generally speaking, predict where we will be in terms of sick rates at the NYPD. The last four days — it is going up.”

While crime has been declining, Shea said, many parks in the five boroughs have been packed with people declining to practice social distancing. Shea said most New Yorkers have been respectful and that his officers will increasingly urge groups to break up, but are not expecting to use fines or more stringent enforcement even with Cuomo's public health order that could give them the legal backing.

Edicts from the governor and mayor ordering businesses to shutter had already ground portions of the city’s economy to a halt. And New Yorkers trying to apply for unemployment have found a website that continually crashes and phone lines that are not answered. The state said that on Thursday more than 500,000 people visited its unemployment website and Friday around 475,000 people called. However, a spokesperson could not provide POLITICO with any stats showing the number of people whose claims were actually processed. Judging by anecdotal evidence, many were not.

Francesca Falacci, a bartender at The Scratcher in Manhattan, said that several of her coworkers have been dialing the state Department of Labor for days to no avail and many have no idea what they will do to pay for food and rent.

“I’m terrified,” she said. “It’s very surreal.”

For local firms with fewer than 100 employees, the Department of Small Business Services has still not released an application form for no-interest loans of up to $75,000 that it said last week would be available. And while the mayor appeared to chastise the department Friday morning, by the end of the day he said the money would be moving by the end of next week.