Staff at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, New York City, USA, are unloading a shipment of ventilators sent by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Pollard asked for more ventilators, because there are more than 400 Covid-19 patients here and the condition of many people is deteriorating, while many new patients continue to be hospitalized.
She asked for 25 machines but only received 15. `We’ll take anything,` Pollard said.
Dr. Adey Tsegaye at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park.
Hospitals in New York are facing the strongest attack of the pandemic in recent days, as the number of new nCoV infections continues to increase and April 8 becomes a `deadly day` with 779 deaths.
Emergency alarms keep ringing because patients need assistance when the city’s medical system is `overwhelmed` during the crisis called Covid-19.
While at work, Pollard received a phone call from a staff member in the intensive care unit.
The staff who delivered the ventilator to the hospital room has not returned.
When the elevator stopped on the 5th floor, a respiratory technician was waiting to take the machine from Pollard.
When Pollard returned to her room to assemble the remaining ventilators, she kept repeating the same words she had said many times in recent days: `God is always merciful, and He is merciful to all.`
Although Governor Andrew Cuomo said on April 7 that Covid-19 in New York state was showing signs of peaking as the number of patients requiring intensive care and mechanical ventilation decreased, many Northwell Health hospitals in and around
Nurse Rosemarie Robinson wondered how bad things would get when she arrived at Long Island Jewish Forest Hills Hospital on April 6.
Robinson needs enough nurses to check their medication infusions, oxygen levels and blood pressure.
Some nurses in Forest Hills could not work that day because they were infected with nCoV and had to be quarantined.
Each new patient admission puts Robinson at risk of staff shortages.
Northwell Health staff set up a field tent outside North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset.
The head nurse texted her to ask where she was and said the hospital needed to open a third intensive care room.
Three days later, with extra nurses from California, Minnesota and Florida, the hospital opened a 12-bed intensive care unit.
`I’ve never seen things this extreme,` said Helen Bloch, an emergency physician with 35 years of experience.
It was Bloch’s first day at Northwell Health Emergency Medical Services in Syosset, New York.
In the room across from Bloch’s workplace, screens continuously announced 911 calls and an electronic map tracked the location of about 70 ambulances.
Bloch spent much of March in the emergency room at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, and now she feels exhausted.
After reviewing electronic medical records, Bloch agreed to transfer a patient.
But another request came: find another patient eligible for transfer.
On the morning of April 2, Adey Tsegaye had a shift at Long Island Jewish Medical Center hospital in New Hyde Park.
Tsegaye met with the doctor on duty last night to find out how each patient was doing.
One patient recovered well, while another female patient had to return to the ventilator two days after the device was removed.
Tsegaye and a group of doctors and nurses visited each patient.
This patient passed the doctors’ daily spontaneous breathing test.
She skeptically asked the doctors and nurses here about the possibility of weaning the patient off the ventilator.
Another doctor removed the patient’s tracheal tube.
Doctors review oxygen levels and observe the patient.
Medical staff at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens.
Dr. Darryl Adler ended a 12-hour shift on April 4 at Long Island Jewish Valley Stream Hospital at the bedside of an 89-year-old patient who had bilateral pneumonia and had to be on a ventilator.
Mrs. Victoria Gourdine lives alone in an apartment near her daughter, Nicole Mitchell’s house.
She called an ambulance when she returned to visit her mother a day later.
`I’ll see you again soon,` Mrs. Gourdine said weakly.
`I love you mom, I love you,` Mitchell and her daughter said in unison.
After that, the hospital continued to call Mitchell to inform her that her mother might need a ventilator and advised her to prepare to make the choice of using the ventilator or letting her die peacefully.
Not long after, Dr. Aller called Mitchell again to say that her mother needed breathing support and was unlikely to survive.
`Let my mother die in peace,` Mitchell offered.
Mitchell knew she would be able to go to another, better world, but the decision was not easy for her.