Hotels To Add 10,000 Beds To NYC Hospital Capacity, Officials Say

NEW YORK, NY — Efforts to convert hotel rooms into hospital facilities as New York City deals with the outbreak of coronavirus could add 10,000 hospital beds to the city's capacity, city health officials said this week.

Converting hotel rooms into medical facilities will allow city hospitals to add much-needed ICU beds to their facilities as more patients sick with coronavirus require critical and acute care, President and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals Mitchell Katz said. The hotel facilities themselves cannot accommodate ICU beds because they lack lab facilities and proper equipment, Katz said.

"We intend to convert all of the hospitals into intensive care units because an intensive care patient relies tremendously on the ability of the laboratory, on the pharmacy, on equipment, radiology – you cannot create an intensive care unit, a bed in a hotel. But what we can do is turn out facilities into large intensive care units and then use the hotels and the other alternative facilities for medicine patients who do need support but don't need the same level with ICU need," Katz said during a Wednesday evening news conference.

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Many hotels in New York City are nearing deals with city, state and federal officials to convert their buildings for medical use, Mayor Bill de Blasio said earlier this week. Ideal locations for conversions are hotels that are nearby city hospital, the mayor said.

Converting a hotel into a hospital may be as simple as the "flip of a switch," de Blasio said. During conversations with the Army Corps of Engineers, de Blasio learned that most hotel floor plans translate easily for medical use by installing nurses stations near hotel elevators.

"I think between the three levels of government we are going to get a lot of hotels. Literally in some cases, leasing entire hotels, converting them into temporary hospitals," de Blasio said during a Monday evening appearance on NY1's "Inside City Hall."

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