Makeshift hospitals transform New York City as it battles coronavirus pandemic

As cases of COVID-19 in New York City continue to climb, makeshift emergency field hospitals are popping up and transforming some of the city's most iconic sites.

Video Transcript

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SHELLY KELLY: I never expected to be here in New York City setting up a field hospital.

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I have been working with Samaritan's Purse as a volunteer on the Disaster Assistance Response Teams for the last 10 years, so I have been around several disasters. But this is the first one in the United States.

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Samaritan's Purse got involved when Mt. Sinai reached out to us just a week or so ago and asked us to step in and help with their medical staffing, and put up a disaster ward here out here in Central Park so that we can kind of help relieve their medical staff and take care of these patients. We are just working in coordination with Mt. Sinai. They get to make the decision of which patients they are going to send over to us. And we are absolutely happy to receive even critical patients, all the way down to not-so-critical patients. But really, it's their decision.

The people setting up the tents are both here from Wilkesboro, North Carolina, as Samaritan's Purse employees that have experience setting up these tents around the world. But then amazingly, we have some volunteers, just New York people that were walking down the street even, and saw what we were doing and said, hey, can we help you set this up? And so we took their offer and let them come in and put beds together, and unpack boxes, and just all sorts of things.

Tents that we have set up here are waterproof, and they're able to withstand rain. And they have plastic floors that we mop frequently throughout the day. And they can handle just about anything.

We have 10 ventilators. 10 beds in the ICU, so 10 ventilators. One for each patient. And then we have a step-down ward too that does not have ventilators. And then we have a regular ward.

So in total, there are 68 beds setup here in Central Park, 10 of which are the ICU beds. So we have plenty of supplies for the 68 beds that we have, both to cover the patients that we are going to be treating, as well as the staff that are taking care of them. We have masks, we have gowns. Goggles, that sort of thing. Anything for PPE we're good on right now.

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I will be here for a month. Those of us that are here now will be here for three to four weeks, and then we will have another wave of volunteers that will be coming in to back-fill us after that. And we will just keep going like that until we're not needed anymore.

My family on-board with me being here, and they are very encouraging. And my kids waved at me and said, bye, Mom. See you in a month.

I mean, it's hard. A month is a long time. But for me, personally, I love it and there's no place I'd rather be.

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