‘Epicentre of the epicentre’: This Queens NY hospital is coronavirus ground zero

Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, New York is being described as the “epicentre of epicentre” of the global pandemic or COVID-19’s “ground zero”.

Elmhurst Hospital in New York is being described as the “epicentre of epicentre” of the global pandemic, or COVID-19’s “ground zero”.

Occupying a block in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in immigrant-crowded Queens, Elmhurst is the epicentre of New York’s most deadly and infected borough.

As New York’s death toll soars past 10,000 – with far more people dying per capita than in Italy – Queens has recorded more than a third of the deaths, ahead of Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Manhattan.

And within Queens, living in the cramped and squalid streets near Elmhurst hospital, is a neighbourhood of neglected, poor migrant workers.

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Its cultural mix of African-American, Indian, Mexican, Chinese, Latin American people is largely made up of essential service workers with no medical insurance.

Elmhurst Hospital has been overwhelmed as they have fallen sick, forced to continue working even when infected by COVID-19 to support their families.

As emergency medicine specialist Dr Ben McVane wrote in the New York Times: “The neighbourhood has among the highest rates of severely crowded housing in the city.

“Landlords convert single-family homes into cramped, poorly ventilated apartment units … living conditions (which) leave little room for social distancing.

“(They are) driving cabs, stocking grocery stores, making and delivering food.

“Many are undocumented immigrants and work off the books or as a part of the gig economy; their jobs don’t offer health insurance, benefits or employment protection.

Ambulances line up outside Elmhurst Hospital, the ‘epicentre of the epicentre’ of the world’s coronavirus pandemic. Picture: Mary Altaffer

Patients line up for COVID-19 testing at Elmhurst Hospital which has been overwhelmed by cases. Picture: John Minchillo

A patient at Elmhurst Hospital Center. Picture: Kathy Willens

NYPD officer guards Elmhurst testing queue.Picture: John Minchillo

“The people living around Elmhurst Hospital are … dependent on a public hospital system that is already overstretched and underfunded.

“I’m a doctor at the epicentre of the epicentre … of the coronavirus outbreak.”

Dr McVane’s hospital has been heavily taxed with an influx of coronavirus patients as confirmed cases in Queens topped past 3500, and with more unconfirmed but probable cases identified.

He described scenes of less ill COVID-19 patients lying “on crowded rows of stretchers” or sitting on chairs With oxygen masks and waiting “endlessly for an available inpatient bed or to be transferred to a less crowded hospital”.

An “ever increasing number of critically ill patients” were on ventilators or intubated and sedated.

Data released by New York City health officials shows that residents in the “immigrant-rich” Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, Corona and Flushing Meadow suburbs of Queens “have tested positive for the coronavirus at higher rates than in wealthy, mostly white parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn”.

One in five people living in Corona and Elmhurst lives in poverty.

Condensation from liquid oxygen tanks fogs the corner of the Elmhurst Hospital in coronavirus stricken Queens. Picture: Wong Maye-E

A patient is transferred from Elmhurst as the hospital is crowded with pateints from the Queens neighbourhood. Picture: Kathy Willens

Resident of Corona i Queens are mostly unisnured essential indutries workers crowded into tenements.Picture: Frank Franklin II

A patient is wheeled past medical workerswith an oxygen tank at Elmhurst Hospital, Queens. Picture: Kathy Willens.

A medic of the Elmhurst Hospital Centre medical team after stepping outside of the emergency room. Picture: Mary Altaffer

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Despite overseas perceptions of the US health system being a club which locks out those who don’t have jobs carrying insurance, there is a public hospital system in cities like New York.

Dr McVane says more than a million New Yorkers annually access that system “regardless of their ability to pay”.

He said Elmhurst Hospital also treats serves prison inmates, drug addicts, the mentally ill and the homeless.

He wrote that Queens “has 1.5 hospital beds per 1,000 people, compared to 5.3 in Manhattan”.

As New York Governor Andrew Cuomo deals with the escalating toll in New York, he has asked hospitals to share resources and intake burdens across the state to relieve pressure on public institutions like Elmhurst overwhelmed with coronavirus cases

Cuomo has kept a cool head as the unimaginable keeps on happening … overwhelmed morgues filling refrigerated trucks with bodies outside hospitals, the Hart Island public cemetery in the Bronx crowding with unprecedented numbers of the unclaimed dead.

Emerging as a leading national voice on the coronavirus pandemic for Americans, he has now pleaded for doctors and nurses from other states around the US to aid New York’s hospitals.

At Elmhurst, Dr McVane has described patients struggling on ventilators in its crowded hallways and wards asking him “will I get through this?”.

“He wrote of the poor and disadvantaged residents he has grown to love while working at Elmhurst: “it pains me to watch this community decimated by COVID-19”.

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