Javits, Comfort Are Only Treating Hundreds Of Patients: Officials

NEW YORK, NY — The federal medical facilities at the Javits Center and the USNS Comfort are filled with empty hospital beds and operating at about one-tenth of their capacities as New York City hospitals continue to be slammed with patients suffering from the new coronavirus, according to numbers released by federal medical officials.

The Javits Center is treating just 255 patients and the Comfort is treating just 64 patients as of Friday morning, a spokesman for the Department of Defense said during a Friday briefing on the military's response to the coronavirus outbreak. The facilities have a combined capacity of about 3,000 hospital beds.

Federal officials insisted Friday that the relative emptiness suggests that New York City hospitals have a greater need for staffing and resources than extra hospital capacity.

"What we've found is that while the civilian hospitals are getting to capacity what they really need is that extra manpower, that extra staffing," Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Thomas McCaffery.

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McCaffety said that states such as New York did not "get it wrong" when calculating how many hospital beds would be needed for coronavirus patients. It's better that states do "good due diligence and planning and anticipating" rather than needing emergency capacity. To date, the Department of Defense has allocated about 400 doctors, nurses and respiratory specialists to local hospitals and are expecting to deploy more.

Initially, the Javits Center and Comfort were to serve as overflow valves for non-coronavirus patients coming from local hospitals. Federal officials later honored requests from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to approve both facilities to treat coronavirus patients.

Local hospital workers contradicted federal official's suggestion that Javits and Comfort beds are going empty because of a lack of need. The real issue is that the federal facilities' procedures for screening patients are too strict, workers told the New York Post.

A healthcare worker at Metropolitan Hospital told the Post that the public hospital recently requested Javits take 95 of its patients, but only one fit the criteria, describing the 25-point checklist for patients as "bullsh--."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said during a Friday press conference that efforts to increase capacity at local hospitals are also likely contributing to the small number of patients at Javits and the Comfort. New York hospitals increased capacity from 50,000 to 90,000 beds since the outbreak began, which reduced the need for hospitals to transfer patients to overflow beds at the federal centers. The state's PAUSE order — which shut down schools and nonessential business — and widespread compliance with social distancing measures has also stemmed the virus' infection rate, Cuomo said Friday.

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