Field hospitals rise and a Navy ship arrives as hospitals fill
A makeshift hospital went up in Central Park and the USNS Comfort docked in Manhattan as the city raced to expand capacity.
Emergency medical tents rose in Central Park and a Navy hospital ship steamed into New York Harbor this week as the city scrambled to expand its capacity to treat a surging tide of coronavirus patients threatening to overwhelm its hospitals.
A field hospital of white tents was erected on the lawns of Central Park, across from Mount Sinai Hospital, by a disaster relief organisation to take overflow patients. The 1,000-bed Navy ship USNS Comfort docked on Manhattan's West Side, and the Javits Convention Center was converted into a vast temporary hospital.
The extraordinary measures reflected the severity of the crisis. Emergency rooms in Queens and the Bronx, among the hardest-hit areas, were inundated. Medical workers described harrowing shifts amid shortages of protective gear, and refrigerated trucks were brought in to serve as temporary morgues as the death toll mounted.
Health care workers were hailed as heroes, and each evening at 7pm New Yorkers leaned out of windows and onto balconies to cheer and bang pots in gratitude, a nightly ritual that offered a flicker of solidarity amid the fear.
The images of a makeshift hospital in Central Park and a warship summoned to the harbour of the world's financial capital captured the scale of an emergency few had imagined possible, as the city endured the darkest weeks of the pandemic.