'Overwhelmed’ St. John’s Hospital in Far Rockaway needs 30 ventilators, councilman says
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Queens residents wait for testing outside Elmhurst Hospital. AP Photo/Mary Altlaffer
By David Brand
St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway is “overwhelmed” by COVID-19 patients and needs 30 ventilators to provide adequate treatment, said Councilmember Donovan Richards Tuesday. A hospital spokesperson confirmed the number of needed ventilators.
Since the 257-bed St. John’s treated the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Queens on Feb. 28, the hospital has seen a “big surge in individuals who are positive,” Richards said
“There is a huge need for ventilators there. The hospital has been requesting another 30 ventilators,” Richards said. “They’re trying to find beds at this point.”
“It is growing into a crisis and their staff is testing positive,” he added.
Richards said he expected a new temporary 1,000-bed medical center at Aqueduct Race Track will reduce the strain on St. John’s, the lone hospital on the Rockaway peninsula. The Aqueduct plan was announced by Gov. Andrew Cuomo Friday.
Councilmember Donovan Richards called on the city to publish neighborhood-level COVID-19 information. Photo John McCarten via City Council/Flickr
St. John’s spokesperson Tom Melillo said the hospital has been receiving weekly equipment deliveries from the Office of Emergency Management, but is still in need of goggles for staff, in addition to the 30 ventilators.
Melillo declined to provide a specific number of patients who have been treated for COVID-19 at the hospital because the number changes daily and because he said he does not want to cause “panic.”
“It increases basically every day,” Melillo said, adding that the majority of patients have recovered — including the person who was the first in the borough to test positive. “They went home last week,” he said.
At least 13,576 Queens residents had tested positive for COVID-19 as of 9:30 a.m. March 31, accounting for more than a third of the city’s 40,900 total confirmed cases.
The city-run Elmhurst Hospital has emerged as the epicenter of the crisis, while Jamaica Hospital, a nonprofit facility in Richmond Hill, has also been “flooded” by patients, physicians there told the Eagle.
Richards described the lack of equipment at the overburdened St. John’s Episcopal Hospital during a conference call with reporters Tuesday afternoon. He and fellow Southeast Queens Councilmember Adrienne Adams have urged the city to share neighborhood-level data on cases of COVID-19 to pinpoint clusters.
The city Health Department has so far only shared a map depicting testing patterns in United Hospital Fund districts, which group communities into vague regions that are used for few other city data sets.
"Right now we're fighting this battle with blindfolds on and that’s due to a lack of transparency from the Health Department," Richards said. "We need data and we need it now."
Adams called Southeast Queens a “hot zone” in the coronavirus outbreak, but said local leaders struggle to advocate for more resources because the community-level has not been published.
“People are dying out here and we don’t have time to waste,” she said.
Adams also urged the city and state to build testing sites in Southeast Queens — a region that currently lacks a testing facility other than hospitals. She suggested building testing sites in empty parking lots.
Richards recommended adding testing sites to a large parking lot at York College, Roy Wilkins Park and the empty beachfront expanse from Beach 32nd Street to Beach 56th Street.
