New York’s Javits Center Will Be A 2,000 Bed Hospital Within A Week

This week, the Jacob K. Javits center in New York City is being turned into a 1,000 bed hospital. That’s part of a plan to eventually turn it into a 2,000 bed hospital, according to Bloomberg.

Governor Andrew Cuomo has proposed that the Center’s main showroom is broken up into four 250 bed hospitals, each about 40,000 sq. feet in size. New Jersey is taking similar measures, asking FEMA, with help from the President, to operate four pop-up hospitals. 

In Manhattan, the Javits centers is one of the biggest pieces of event spaces in the nation. The New York National Guard and the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers are working on preparing the center, which is slated to open over the next 7 to 10 days.

The hope is that the center will house 1,000 beds for intensive care and another 1,000 for less intensive care.

Governor Cuomo said: “For us a major thrust is increasing hospital capacity.”

The state is expecting to need 110,000 beds as a result of the virus spread, 57,000 more than the state currently has on hand. Cuomo is also preparing an executive order to allow hospitals to increase their capacity by 50% to handle the growing number of patients. 

The number of infections in New York had surged past 15,000 on Sunday, making it the clear U.S. epicenter of the virus outbreak. New York now accounts for more than a third of all deaths nationwide from the virus. 

New Jersey is also now approaching 3,000 confirmed cases and is trying to add hospital beds also. Governor Murphy said on Monday that he would release as many as 1,000 low level offenders from county jails, who would then be screened for the virus before being released back to the public.

We guess the Governor would rather see these prisoners looting on the streets than contracting the virus in prison.

Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said: “Jails can be incubators for disease.”