Wrong timing

“If we can provide even a few months of early warning for just one pandemic, the benefits will outweigh all the time and energy we're devoting. Imagine preventing health crises, not just responding to them.”

—Nathan Wolfe

By Alex P. Vidal

AFTER two weeks of isolation (I religiously followed the “stay at home” guidelines ordered recently by Gov. Andrew Cuomo) and nursing a sore throat and intermittent sneezing, I finally decided to go out Wednesday (March 25) afternoon for a checkup in the hospital.

Destination: Elmhurst Hospital on Broadway Street in Queens.

From my apartment, it would be a 20-minute walk.

It was my first “exposure” in public after several days, and I didn’t like the atmosphere several steps after coming out from the gate.

I could count with my fingers the people I saw walking in the streets.

Most of them were walking fast like they were fleeing from a volcano eruption nearby and were wearing masks like me. 

The scene was a reminiscence of the 1932 Victor Halperin’s “White Zombie” film: people avoided eye contact with each other like they just came out from a whore house.

I became suspicious.

I thought it was a mistake to interrupt my “self quarantine” strategic plan, which started days ago, when I suddenly learned that Elmhurst Hospital ostensibly “wasn’t safe” for me.

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On that day, news spread here that the hospital had suffered an “apocalyptic” coronavirus (COVID-19) surge.

Elmhurst hospital was No. 1 among the New York City hospitals facing the kind of harrowing increases in cases that overwhelmed health care systems in China and Italy.

Wrong timing. I chickened out in the eleventh hour and hurriedly returned to my apartment.

The day I decided to go to Elmhurst Hospital was the day the hospital was at a breaking point amid the coronavirus crisis with 13 patients dying there in a 24-hour span, it was reported.

The 545-bed hospital had been overrun and in desperate need of supplies.

It was reportedly operating at more than 125-percent capacity, compared to its typical 80-percent capacity rate.

The number of deaths recorded there between Tuesday (March 24) and Wednesday (March 26) was “consistent with the amount of ICU patients being treated there,” according to a spokesman for the city public hospital systems.

“Elmhurst is at the center of this crisis,” said Christopher Miller. “It’s the number one priority of our public hospital system right now.”

“Staff are doing everything in our power to save every person who contracts COVID-19,” Miller said. “But unfortunately this virus continues to take an especially terrible toll on the elderly and people with preexisting conditions.”

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Source said nurses were complaining they were like “working at a field hospital in the middle of a war zone.”

New patients were reportedly lined up the doors and there weren’t enough beds to hold them. Equipment is running out faster than they could restock it. The situation was reportedly something nurses have never seen before.

According to The New York Times, some people have died inside the emergency room while waiting for a bed.

“It’s apocalyptic,” Dr. Ashley Bray was quoted in the paper.

Scores of people were seen lining up outside the hospital just to get tested for the coronavirus weeks earlier.

It was learned that in the last 24 hours, Elmhurst added 25 staffers from other hospitals, as well as a number of ventilators. 

The hospital, where I used to visit for my medicals in 2016, might need a lot more help to sustain itself amid a surge in coronavirus patients.

Data shows Queens has been hard-hit by the pandemic and accounts for about a third of Big Apple cases, 6,420 as of March 25.

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About 30 percent of Big Apple cases are Queens residents, 5,066 as of Wednesday, according to the City Department of Health.

Elmhurst staffers on the front lines were said to be doing a tremendous job with limited resources they have but the hospital is reportedly “at a critical stage.”

“Right now, we're seeing double our average census every day," said Dr. Ben McVane. "We're filling up we're filling up our ICUs. We have several floors now that are devoted only to COVID positive patients. So we're finding ourselves getting close to being overwhelmed by patients. Some of these are very sick patients."

Elmhurst has a level one trauma center and is located in one of the most densely populated spots in the city's most populous borough.

It is also the hospital to which Rikers Island inmates are rushed in the event of an emergency at the city's jail complex.

Of the more than 20,000 coronavirus cases in NYC there are at least 6,000 cases in Queens, the most of any borough.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)