Elmhurst Hospital: The Unforgettable Epicenter

After New York City confirmed its first case of COVID-19 on March 1, our once-shimmering metropolis spiraled downwards into a hellish nightmare. While the pandemic ruthlessly pursues our struggling ghost town as its favorite hostage, New Yorkers hang on tightly to a loose thread of hope that the curve has finally begun to flatten.

Yet for medical professionals, the situation on the front lines remains disastrous. As an overwhelming number of coronavirus cases continues to stream into New York City hospitals, exhausted workers work relentlessly to save lives. And after the daily average of 149.4 deaths inevitably strikes hospitals at the end of the day—a tragic cost in the form of human lives—they must return the next day to repeat the same routine.

Elmhurst Hospital in Elmhurst, Queens is a 545-bed public city hospital that has been particularly affected by the pandemic since its beginning stages. The hospital began to gain mass media attention when The New York Times published a video on March 25, in which an emergency room doctor, Dr. Colleen Smith, revealed the abysmal conditions that patients and medical professionals suffered through. By reporting on crises such as the lack of equipment and the worsening conditions of patients, she aimed to inform the public that hospitals were struggling to surmount the concentrated COVID-19 assaults despite frequent local and federal reassurances. “This is bad,” she stated bluntly in one of the clips. “People are dying. We don’t have the tools we need.”

From there on, the city watched in horror as Elmhurst fought the full force of the New York outbreak. The hospital was operating far beyond 100 percent capacity, with every bed occupied by an intubated COVID-19 patient. Residents stood in barricaded lines that stretched across the block, waiting to be tested in Elmhurst’s makeshift tents. Potential COVID-19 patients made up more than 80 percent of the emergency department—patients who would then die in the emergency room while waiting for a bed. Their bodies would be transferred to the refrigerated trucks that stood outside the hospitals as ancillary morgues, a last resort for our city that has now run out of morgue space.

Elmhurst’s medical professionals, who had to continuously witness such jarring sights during their everyday battle against the pandemic, were overburdened with the sudden onslaught of cases. In an interview with Buzzfeed, an anonymous Elmhurst doctor spoke of the small number of pulmonology and critical attendings (specialists in critical respiratory diseases), as well as the lack of respiratory therapists who were needed to tend to vented patients. All Elmhurst employees, no matter what their specialty was, were forced to take on the complicated procedures of intubation and multi-organ failures. Despite all these efforts, the fact remained that Elmhurst was significantly understaffed and outnumbered—far from the ideal “1-to-1 ratio of doctors and perfect staffing” needed to deal with the coronavirus.

To further exacerbate Elmhurst’s catastrophe, there was concern over the lack of medical supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) amidst an increasing number of hospitalizations. In late March, the hospital feared that, with the influx of COVID-19 patients, there would soon be massive shortages of specific equipment medical professionals needed—ventilators, CPAP machines, N-95 masks, and protective eye gear are all examples. The Food and Drug Administration strictly advised the general public to not wear N-95 masks more than once, but Smith described how she had to wash, disinfect, and reuse her N-95 mask each day. Buzzfeed’s anonymous doctor spoke of how he and his colleagues were forced to improvise with their PPE: “Some people bring in face shields from home. Some are wearing goggles... Some are walking around in cutaway scrubs.” The Center for Disease and Control (CDC) estimated on April 9 that 9,282 health care professionals had contracted the coronavirus. The lack of proper PPE when dealing with a highly infectious virus is suspected to be one of the top contributors to this number, which the CDC warned was a vast underestimation in the first place.

Though the pandemic has spared few New York City hospitals, Elmhurst Hospital has unanimously been dubbed as the “epicenter of the epicenter.” A fifth of all Elmhurst residents are at or below the poverty line, with many living in small, crowded apartments and working as high-risk essential frontline workers to support themselves and their families. Coincidentally, Elmhurst is one of the leading neighborhoods in terms of coronavirus cases. Elmhurst has 1,893 confirmed cases as of April 13 and an estimated rate of 20.1 cases per 1,000 people compared to New York City’s average of 12.4 per 1,000. These numbers can be explained by Elmhurst’s demographics—its primarily poor, working-class, minority residents are at a disproportionately higher risk of contracting COVID-19.

Yet there remains a beacon of light amid this dark medical calamity. Councilman Francisco Moya of Queens reported on April 16 that Elmhurst has mostly stabilized since the “tidal wave” of COVID-19 cases in late March. The hospital has been adapting quickly to the disaster, managing to remain one precarious step ahead of the biting pandemic. They keep non-critical patients outside the emergency room and in isolated tents to prevent further spread of the virus, while also increasing their numbers of nurses and assistants. COVID-19 patients are now contained in an isolated section of the hospital under negative pressure to decrease the risk of cross-contamination. And the ventilator crisis seems temporarily resolved, with Mayor Bill De Blasio’s statement on April 12 that New York City had “barely” enough ventilators and PPE for the week. Governor Andrew Cuomo then announced an executive order that allowed New York to “redistribute ventilators and [PPE] to hospitals with the highest need.” Thus, though the risk of equipment shortages still remains at large, the situation at Elmhurst has improved considerably since March.

To ensure that hospital conditions continue to improve throughout the pandemic, New Yorkers must take immediate action to help hospitals in need. For example, Pictures for Elmhurst is a relief effort specifically geared toward financially assisting Elmhurst Hospital. The organization will sell prints by New York-based photographers until April 20, with all proceeds contributing to the direct purchase of protective and medical equipment needed by the hospital. New Yorkers may also donate to NYC Health + Hospitals and other instrumental relief organizations like DirectRelief, which would aid in alleviating the pandemic on a wider scale. Non-monetary donations, such as extra surgical or N-95 masks and extra lab goggles, would also help temporarily replenish their supplies.

One of the most significant and easiest ways to help the situation is simply to stay home. Officials and frontline workers are in unanimous agreement that social distancing is what slows the spread of the coronavirus and thus helps flatten the curve—its effects have been proven by the decreasing numbers of hospitalizations and deaths since April 13. To break quarantine for nonessential social gatherings is not only extremely selfish, but it also undermines the painstaking efforts of the Elmhurst personnel fighting to save lives.

Finally, New Yorkers must remember not to lose hope. The situation has undoubtedly been frightening, but we must seek inspiration in the medical professionals who, against all the odds, have braved a devastating and unprecedented pandemic to care for their fellow citizens. The past few weeks have been difficult and may become even harder in the future, but all New Yorkers are united in the struggle against this crisis. We must uplift one another to maintain the uniquely strong morale that has carried us through all of history’s worst disasters and we must trust, appreciate, and help the courageous individuals on the front line to the best of our ability.

Elmhurst Hospital has seen and suffered the very worst of a deadly pandemic that tore through everything it could find. Yet despite all odds, it has risen from its struggles as a shining paragon of sheer resilience and flexibility. If New Yorkers come together to help their hospitals in the fight against COVID-19, their efforts will start a spark of revitalization throughout the city and our darkened ghost town will begin its transformation into a brighter, shimmering metropolis once more.