Sign up for our special edition newsletter to get a daily update on the coronavirus pandemic.
Mayor Bill de Blasio warned Friday that the number of coronavirus patients requiring life-saving ventilators will double by early next week — a “staggering” surge that the city’s hospital system can’t handle without more medical personnel and supplies.
“We predict by something like Monday or Tuesday 5,000 people in our ICUs, intubated, fighting for their lives with COVID cases,” de Blasio said on CNN’s “New Day.”
“Five thousand — and that number will then grow. That’s a staggering number. Every one of those people will need a ventilator, every one of those people will need doctors and nurses constantly checking on them and adjusting their treatment,” de Blasio continued.
There are currently 2,240 patients in city ICUs. Many, but not all, of them are on ventilators. The city’s coronavirus death toll topped 1,500 Thursday, with nearly 50,000 confirmed cases.
Earlier Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” the mayor said city hospitals have just enough respiratory machines to get through the weekend.
Bill de BlasioDennis A. Clark“I don’t know after Sunday if we’re going to have what we need,” he said.
De Blasio pleaded with the federal government to send 1,000 nurses, 300 respiratory therapists and 150 doctors by Sunday. He said the ventilators are no good without the trained personnel who operate the life-saving equipment.
The mayor wants the US military to organize an immediate national enlistment of medical professionals to help combat New York’s COVID-19 crisis.
“If that is not done in the coming days, you are going to see people die who didn’t need to die,” de Blasio said on CNN.
“First it will be hundreds, then it will be thousands, who we’ll lose, Americans we’ll lose who did not need to die,” de Blasio said.




