Queens Tennis Stadium To House Temporary Hospital During Pandemic

FLUSHING, QUEENS — The Queens stadium that is home to the U.S. Open tennis tournament will be used as a temporary hospital to create more room for COVID-19 patients at New York City's hospitals, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday.

New York City’s emergency management office started work Tuesday on the 350-bed hospital facility, which will be in an indoor training center at the sprawling Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, a spokesperson for the U.S. Tennis Association told the Wall Street Journal.

Patients will come from Elmhurst Hospital, where a spike in coronavirus cases has already pushed the hospital over capacity, and start arriving next week, de Blasio told reporters during a news conference.

"Before this crisis, all hospitals combined had 20,000 staffed beds. We have to dramatically increase that—and quickly," de Blasio said in a tweet. "Places like the Tennis Center hospital will help us meet that demand and we'll keep fighting every single day to build more of them across the city."

To keep up to date with coronavirus developments in NYC, sign up for Patch's news alerts and newsletter.

The facility will house coronavirus patients who don't need ICU care, de Blasio said Tuesday. It will take three weeks to finish building

Meanwhile, the tennis center's Louis Armstrong Stadium will become a commissary churning out 25,000 meal packages a day for hospital workers and others in need, WSJ reported.

“We’re there to do whatever the city and state needs,” tennis center spokesperson Chris Widmaier told WSJ, which first reported the news.

Coronavirus In NYC: What's Happened And What You Need To Know