
A makeshift morgue has been set up outside a Manhattan hospital in a bid to handle any possible surge in coronavirus victims as the New York City death roll rose to 192 and officials warned the city's morgues were nearing capacity.

Armed military personnel, NYPD and NYC Medical Examiner's Office employees were spotted outside Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital on Wednesday as crew members erected huge white tents as part of the makeshift facility.

In addition to the dome-like tents, multiple refrigeration trucks were also lined up at the site in Midtown along 30th Street and the FDR Drive parkway.

The coronavirus death toll in New York City has risen to 192 and there are now 17,000 confirmed cases, accounting for more than half the cases in the hardest-hit state in the nation. More than 2,800 people in the city are hospitalized because of the virus - double the figure from three days earlier - and more than 600 are being treated in intensive care.

In New York state, there are now 30,000 coronavirus cases and the death toll is currently 285.

There are currently about 53,000 beds and 3,000 intensive care unit beds in the state's hospitals. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the state could need 140,000 beds and 40,000 ICU beds to cope with the outbreak.

New York state currently has a 12 percent hospitalization rate in relation to coronavirus, according to Cuomo.

A makeshift morgue was set up outside Bellevue Hospital in New York City hospital on Wednesday in a bid to handle any possible surge in coronavirus victims

Multiple refrigeration trucks were lined up at the makeshift morgue site along 30th Street and the FDR Drive parkway near Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan

It comes as health officials said morgues in New York city were expected to reach capacity within a week, Politico reports.

Sources said some morgues had already hit capacity within the past seven days.

Morgues run by the Medical Examiner's office, which stretches across all five boroughs, have the capacity to hold 900 bodies.

New York has asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency for emergency mortuary assistance as the pandemic worsens. The federal government sent emergency mortuary assistance following the 9/11 attacks in NYC.

Cuomo said state measures to control the coronavirus appeared to be working as the rate of hospitalizations has slowed in recent days.

'Now that is almost too good to be true,' he said. 'This is a very good sign and a positive sign, again not 100% sure it holds, or it's accurate but the arrows are headed in the right direction.'

He had earlier predicted the state could be as close as two weeks away from a crisis that sees 40,000 people in intensive care.

Such a surge would overwhelm hospitals, which now have just 3,000 intensive care unit beds statewide.

'We are not slowing it. And it is accelerating on its own,' Cuomo said. 'One of the forecasters said we were looking at a freight train coming across the country. We're now looking at a bullet train,' he said.

White House officials said Tuesday that anyone who has recently been to New York should self quarantine for 14 days. Dr Deborah Birx, the response coordinator for the White House task force, warned that people leaving the hardest hit area of the US might not be sick but could have been exposed to the virus.

'We remain deeply concerned about New York City and the New York metro area. About 56 percent of all cases in the United States are coming out of the NY metro area,' she said.

New York City hospitals have become the war-zone-like epicenter of the nation's coronavirus crisis as the number of cases continue to increase.

Faced with an infection rate that is five times that of the rest of the country, health workers are putting themselves at risk to fight a tide of sickness that's getting worse by the day amid a shortage of needed supplies and promises of help from the federal government that have yet to fully materialize.

'You're on 100% of the time — no matter what,' said Dr Jolion McGreevy, medical director of The Mount Sinai Hospital emergency department. 'It's been a month of full force, and that's certainly very stressful.'

Armed military personnel, NYPD and NYC Medical Examiner's Office employees were spotted outside Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital on Wednesday as crew members erected huge white tents as part of the makeshift facility

Crew members erected huge white tents on Wednesday as part of the makeshift facility

Workers were spotted fitting out the inside of the white tents that were erected as a makeshift morgue outside the Bellevue Hospital

The dome-like tents were set up in Midtown along 30th Street and the FDR Drive parkway on Wednesday as crews worked to set up the site

Medical Examiner trucks were spotted outside the hospital on Wednesday as the makeshift morgue facilities were constructed

Refrigeration trucks are in place as workers build a makeshift morgue outside of Bellevue Hospital to handle an expected surge in Coronavirus victims

Military personnel and members of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner wore masks as the morgue facilities were built outside the hospital on Wednesday

Patients initially showed up with fairly mild symptoms, ranging from a runny nose to a mild fever, concerned they contracted coronavirus. That shifted over the past week, McGreevy said, and now hospitals are receiving far sicker patients in need of life-saving intervention.

'These are people in severe respiratory distress, needing to be intubated and needing the intensive care unit,' he said. 'We knew it was coming. We saw it in Italy and other places so we were prepared for it, and now we're seeing it.'

Dr Craig Spencer, who survived a bout of Ebola in 2014 and now is director of global health in emergency medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, tweeted on Tuesday of a 'cacophony of coughing' in the ER, saying nearly every patient he encounters has the same symptoms, regardless of age: a persistent hack, shortness of breath and fever.

'You're afraid to take off the mask,' he said. 'It's the only thing that protects you.'

Smith said hospitals in the New York-Presbyterian system are burning through about 40,000 masks a day amid the crisis - about 10 times the normal amount - and have begun issuing staff members just one each day.

Mayor Bill De Blasio said about 2.2 million masks were delivered to hospitals Monday, with additional supplies en route from the state and federal governments. But he said there would have to be a lot more where that came from.

New York City hospitals have become the war-zone-like epicenter of the nation's coronavirus crisis as the number of cases continue to increase

Military personnel and Medical Examiner employees worked alongside each other wearing masks at the site on Wednesday

Armed military personnel and NYC Medical Examiner's Office employees were spotted outside Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital on Wednesday as the facility was erected

A tent is under construction as workers build a makeshift morgue outside of Bellevue Hospital on Wednesday

Dozens of workers could be seen early Wednesday erecting the white, dome-like tents at the site near the hospital

Workers moved around medical supplies and construction equipment on Wednesday in preparation for a potential surge in coronavirus victims

'If we run out of it, it's like sending a soldier into war where everyone else has armor and we don't have armor,' said Dr. Joseph Habboushe, an emergency room physician at NYU Langone Medical Center.

The city's health department last week advised health professionals to continue working after exposure — rather than self-quarantining — unless they show symptoms.

'The more we hear about doctors and nurses getting sick, the more we get nervous,' said Dr. Eric Cioe-Pena, director of global health at Northwell Health. 'It's definitely on the mind of every health care worker in America. We don't want to be in a position where we're making decisions based on resources rather than the clinical care of patients.'

Cioe-Pena has been following what he calls a 'decontamination routine' after every shift, in which he wipes down his phone and washes both his scrubs and street clothes.

'We've ventured into a battle,' he said.

Across the city, health care workers, hospital administrators and public officials were scrambling to preserve precious gear and find more treatment space before they were overwhelmed.

The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center was being converted into a 1,000-bed hospital, and a fully staffed and equipped Naval hospital ship, the USNS Comfort, was expected to arrive within two weeks to provide another 1,000 beds, not for coronavirus patients but to provide relief to hospitals dealing with them.