With downstate hospitals slammed with an increasing amount of COVID-19 patients, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Thursday that the state is looking to start moving patients from downstate to upstate hospitals. 

 

Cuomo did not provide details on whether these are patients with coronavirus or other conditions, but did say this is a last-resort plan. 

Cuomo says first, hospitals should redistribute patients throughout the same hospital system. Some facilities are more crowded than others. Then, there are the overflow sites like the Javits Center that can take more patients. 

There are currently 5,327 people hospitalized due to the virus. 1,290 of those are currently in the ICU on ventilators. There are only 3,000 ICU beds in the state. 

"I'm not eager to distribute people from downstate to upstate," says Cuomo, "That's the last option."

Cuomo says the plan is to try and distribute the work among more healthcare workers and more facilities. Hospitals across the state have been instructed to increase their capacity by 50%. Cuomo waived the regulations that capped off the amount of patients facilities can take last week.  

 

More points brought up in Thursday's briefing:

  • Plan to have 1,000+ bed overflow in every county downstate and in every borough of New York City. 
  • Looking at dorms, former nursing homes, etc.
  • Converting anesthesia machines to ventilators
  • Devices to connect two patients to one ventilator
  • Equalizing and distributing load of patients. Bring some downstate patients to upstate hospitals. 
  • Tested over 18,000 people
  • Number of deaths increasing
  • Some patients now on ventilators 20 to 30 days

Cuomo also addressed the uncertainty the current situation puts on the state budget. The budget is due on April 1st. Right now, Cuomo says the revenue loss is unknown and there's no way to tell when the economy will be back up and running. 

Cuomo says the $2 trillion stimulus package passed by the federal government doesn't help state and local governments with their revenue loss. He says the money the state is getting from the bill is earmarked for COVID-19 expenses, not making up for lost revenue. 

He says the budget will have to be put together in a different way than past years. He's looking at having periods throughout the year where he updates different entities on how much money he can actually give them. That amount might be less than what was allocated in the budget, due to unknowns on how the money will actually come in throughout the year.