New York City Weighs Converting Hotels Into Hospitals For Patients Without Coronavirus (wsj.com) 71
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: New York City is working with the hospitality industry to possibly convert entire hotels into hospitals for patients without the novel coronavirus, in an effort to increase capacity at medical facilities as the outbreak grows. The city's emergency management commissioner, Deanne Criswell, said in an interview Wednesday that hotels could be vital as New York City needs more beds to treat those with Covid-19. The hotels would be for "those non-Covid patients who are really minor but need care," she said. It couldn't be determined how many beds would be immediately available for these patients or how much the city would pay hotels.
The city currently uses hotels for some quarantine, and could use them to house health-care workers who need places to stay, Ms. Criswell said. With the city's tourism industry hit by the virus, many hotels are now empty, she added. New York City has 1,339 confirmed cases of the virus as of Wednesday afternoon, with 10 deaths. City officials also hope to turn the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan into a large hospital, using federal medical stations, according to Ms. Criswell. Mayor Bill de Blasio said earlier this week the city had an additional 1,300 beds by reopening closed hospitals and other facilities, including Roosevelt Island's Coler hospital, a city hospital that was no longer in use. A recently built nursing home in Brooklyn will also be used to hold 600 beds, and two Bronx hospitals with more than 100 beds will also be available, according to Mr. de Blasio. To make more space, the city is also discharging patients that can leave hospitals, canceling elective surgeries, and building more capacity within hospitals. Earlier today, the U.S. and Canada announced it will suspend non-essential travel between the two countries to prevent the spread of the virus. This comes two days after Canada closed its borders to non-citizens with exceptions for U.S. citizens, air crews and diplomats.
The U.S. is also ordering Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to suspend foreclosures and evictions for at least 60 days.
The city currently uses hotels for some quarantine, and could use them to house health-care workers who need places to stay, Ms. Criswell said. With the city's tourism industry hit by the virus, many hotels are now empty, she added. New York City has 1,339 confirmed cases of the virus as of Wednesday afternoon, with 10 deaths. City officials also hope to turn the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan into a large hospital, using federal medical stations, according to Ms. Criswell. Mayor Bill de Blasio said earlier this week the city had an additional 1,300 beds by reopening closed hospitals and other facilities, including Roosevelt Island's Coler hospital, a city hospital that was no longer in use. A recently built nursing home in Brooklyn will also be used to hold 600 beds, and two Bronx hospitals with more than 100 beds will also be available, according to Mr. de Blasio. To make more space, the city is also discharging patients that can leave hospitals, canceling elective surgeries, and building more capacity within hospitals. Earlier today, the U.S. and Canada announced it will suspend non-essential travel between the two countries to prevent the spread of the virus. This comes two days after Canada closed its borders to non-citizens with exceptions for U.S. citizens, air crews and diplomats.
The U.S. is also ordering Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to suspend foreclosures and evictions for at least 60 days.
Inventory (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a current inventory of general care and ICU beds in the US.
https://www.sccm.org/Blog/Marc... [sccm.org]
If the cases reach into the millions all at once, it will not be enough. Good to see NY authorities thinking ahead.
Re:Inventory (Score:4, Informative)
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Thanks. That fatality rate by age chart on page 5 is sobering.
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The graph on page 8 is actually what bothers me. Even in the best case scenario the ICU beds are WAY outmatched by the cases.
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It's not as bad as you think. Fig. 2 on page 8 illustrates the insufficiency of some measures: the best case there is to limit social distancing to high-risk people. Fig. 3 shows that stronger social distancing measures have much more impact.
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It's too early to say anything about mortality rates. When you look at the development of the disease, you'll notice that mortality rates look horrible during the first few days of the outbreak because it can take as little as 2-3 days for susceptible people to die but at the very least a week to recover, usually 2 weeks an in some cases even longer. In other words, 3 days after the cases start to skyrocket, it looks like nearly all of your patients die. The longer the outbreak lasts, the better your outcom
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They are thinking wrong though. The hotels need to be for corona virus victims, because you are then treating all the same conditions, with the same treatments in the same venue and you are isolating them from people with other conditions. They are just being dicks protecting the hotels from a taint on their reputation. Leave the hospitals to deal with many varied conditions often life threatenting and who do not need the additional threat of infection. The hotels can be more readily staffed by people who o
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Hotels and more hospitals (Score:1)
To get the contractors ready. More workers and trucks in time.
To look for the pressure systems and isolation rooms.
Rooms for staff to get ready for work and for after a shift.
Housing for staff after each shift.
Ambulance crews and cleaning.
To give experts time to understand how not to turn a new look "hospital" hotel into a cruise ship like wuflu spreader.
Had the genetic sequences ready after publica
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But you forget - the virus was "going to disappear. One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear."
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Wrongthink, bro. Big Boofer has said we have always been at war with cornavirus. Therefore, he never said this, it's all a media-liberul-Chinese-deep state conspiracy to make him look incompetent.
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Doubleplusgood!
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But you forget - the virus was "going to disappear. One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear."
Well... Certainly something, or should I say someone, will -- if we're all lucky. :-)
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Its not doing the normal "disappear" part as experts expected.
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Japan has some fun news on that "disappear" part. Its not doing the normal "disappear" part as experts expected.
Share it.
I agree with you, that the US and Britain prioritized economic "stability" over human lives by statistical rationalizations based on a commonly espoused MYTH of "herd immunity" (without vaccination) asserted by MANY on this site when the issue was closing borders. Shanghai Bill certainly did and his post was granted prominence-- the term used was "a wash".
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https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworl... [nhk.or.jp] and
Japanese man tests positive for coronavirus again (March 15 2020)
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworl... [nhk.or.jp]
Lots more at https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworl... [nhk.or.jp] using the coronavirus tag.
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Study:
Thank you! Persistence and vector parameters are not recent as of about 20 days, but their import merits your having posted them...their import merits sky-writing were it possible on Slashdot and not only a recently lifted ban over the Island of Angels.
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Ass backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
Trauma patients need the hospitals.
Since there is essentially nothing that can be done for Covid-19 use the hotels for them.
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Who's going to pay for all of those hotel rooms to be decontaminated afterwards? Also in the same ball park, who would want to stay in a hotel used for diseased people after all this is done?
No, the hotels would never take covid-19 patients and it would be a bad idea to put them there anyways.
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Who's going to decontaminiate them anyway? How does not placing COVID-19 patients in a hotel if needed make a difference? If you have to book a hotel room there's no way now to say it is contamination free... No different than in the future after a suitable delay long enough for most airborne droplets to have fallen to a hard surface and long enough for them to have died there. Even if COVID-19 hadn't come along, you're taking at least some risk every time you stay or eat out at an unknown place. You just h
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A room for a sick person. A hotel has rooms. Put the sick people in a city hotel. Instant hospital design.
The staff have to get ready for each task... use another room...
Lab work.. . use a room. The shared vent will ensure clean air.
Cleaning? Another room.
The patient works out its time to escape as more people get sick with wuflu around them? Bars on the windows. New locks and new doors.
Troops with night vision waiting in the car park and in sur
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Who's going to decontaminiate them anyway?
Is this a trick question? I'd hazard a guess that people who professionally decontaminate things would do it. It is a thing people do for a living.
If you have to book a hotel room there's no way now to say it is contamination free... No different than in the future after a suitable delay long enough for most airborne droplets to have fallen to a hard surface and long enough for them to have died there. Even if COVID-19 hadn't come along, you're taking at least some risk every time you stay or eat out at an unknown place. You just hope for the best.
No one is going to stay in a hotel room they know hosted full blow corona virus patients. The fact that we always run the risk of picking up low risk diseases from our surroundings does not change this and is irrelevant to this discussion.
Good idea or not, they are available beds for someone. There are huge issues in doing this - medicine, blood and plasma transport, getting lab samples back to hospital labs, and not enough nursing staff to handle the larger space, dietary restrictions and associated food transport, combined with networked records keeping not being available and the big one of inconveniencing the doctors doing rounds, along with a host of other problems are just a few that come to mind, but moving anyone who could be moved to free up beds isn't an idea to dismiss out of hand.
...And this is why in the summary they mention "The hotels would be for "those non-Covid patients who are really minor but nee
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Have you ever been to a hotel? Protip: Get a blacklight and take a look around.
Try it in the honeymoon suite, you'll feel like you're in the middle of the universe, stars, stars everywhere...
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Have you ever been to a hotel? Protip: Get a blacklight and take a look around.
I'd find a ton of stuff that has nothing to do with covid-19 I'd wager!
Just because there are other germs in a hotel room doesn't mean people are going to be thrilled with staying in something that served as a disease ward for a disease that has us all sequestered away in our homes in fear of it.
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Who's going to pay for all of those hotel rooms to be decontaminated afterwards?
We (local, state, and federal governments) will. We also pay for the rooms. That is how we float the hotel industry through this period.
Want to help the airlines? Charter flights to move doctors and nurses to the highest need areas.
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If the hotels need a bailout it would probably be cheaper to just hand them money then it would be to pay to decontaminate all of their rooms (never mind any money given to the hotel for the rooms). Hotel rooms are not made like hospital rooms for easy decontamination.
At the end of the day if New York state and city government and their medical industry have thought of using hotel rooms for low needs patients then it's a guarantee they entertained the idea of putting covid-19 patients there. Given that they
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Please don't spread ignorant disinformation during a crisis. Of course there are things we can do for people suffering from lung failure due to coronavirus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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You can easily set that up in a bedroom. No hotel room needed.
But the fact is, there are not nearly enough to go around, so....
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So what is easier, setting up hotel rooms for non-critical cases, or moving the ICU including ventilators, vitals monitors, crash carts, etc. from a hospital to a hotel room? It's not like those hotel rooms are going to be in use otherwise. This could honestly provide some much needed financial relief for the struggling hospitality industry.
Re:Ass backwards (Score:4, Informative)
COVID-19 patients aren't trauma patients.
I suspect the basic concept here is triage. *Most* cases of COVID-19 are mild, and require only isolation. A small minority of cases might require and ICU; if you've never seen what an ICU looks like, well, it's an astonishing amount of effort per patient.
In between those levels you may have patients that require more care and monitoring than can be provided at home. Isolating them from the general hospital population is probably good for them and the patients without COVID-19 too. A hotel in a city with close proximity to a higher tier of care is a pretty good choice for a makeshift intermediate facility, as you have beds and usually feeding facilities.
What you need are nurses, of which there's a national shortage. In a pinch, even having someone to check on people regularly is better than nothing, if a nurse and doctor are available and an ambulance is standing by to move people to a more capable facility.
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In between those levels you may have patients that require more care and monitoring than can be provided at home.
Nearly all of those in-between patients will also require supplemental oxygen. Hospitals have large oxygen concentrators that can supply supplemental O2 to many patients, and they have O2 lines plumbed to every room. Hotels don't have any of that, and we're almost certainly going to be facing a shortage of small oxygen concentrators that could be installed in hotel rooms in the near term.
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Nearly all? Maybe that's the dividing line.
We've been through this before. Before the advent of TB medicines, people got sent to sanitariums where the only "treatment" was to be bundled in a blanket outside for fresh air. Yes, some people who have TB need oxygen. Others need supportive care and to be isolated from people who aren't infected yet.
Obviously this wouldn't be anyone's first choice, but there is potential here for a *massive* shortage of hospital beds. Every case that can be treated in someth
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Trauma patients need the hospitals.
Since there is essentially nothing that can be done for Covid-19 use the hotels for them.
How bad are things in general where you are that trauma is really minor??
The hotels would be for "those non-Covid patients who are really minor but need care," she said
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Since there is essentially nothing that can be done for Covid-19 use the hotels for them.
In cases where intensive care can't be applied, the mortality rate from Covid-19 is ~4%. When intensive care can be applied (ventilators, ...) then the mortality rate drops to ~0.5% or 1%.
There is a great deal that can be done for Covid-19.
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USNS Comfort [ny.gov] is coming to the New York harbor for the trauma patients.
They will still need hotels for all the COVID-19 patients.
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That's pretty smart thinking. You figure all the experts who have made it their life's work to study pandemics would have thought of this, but gatkinso on /. beat them at their own game.
Have you brought this to the NY Department of Health or did you just post it here in the hopes they'd see it?
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the money is used to pay for treatment when people need it.
More money is used to pay lawyers to deny payments, then there's the insufferable bureaucracy that makes the Soviet style look like a drive through liquor store. I find it strange that people put up with it.
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If people don't have proper health insurance, they need to deal with the consequences.
The usual suspects will be demanding a government handout, again. Why should I have to pay for other people's irresponsibility?
Some people cannot afford "proper health insurance". My BC/BS costs $703/month -- just for me -- on the Marketplace, with a $7,200 deductible. I work part-time now and make a little over the limit for any subsidies. Luckily I can afford it, but I know people that couldn't.
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If a reasonable level of health care isn't available to all, then you have an underclass who can get more readily infected by a novel pathogen, and then it's just going to go up the line. Viruses literally don't give a flying fuck about how thick your wallet is.
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If a reasonable level of health care isn't available to all, then you have an underclass who can get more readily infected by a novel pathogen, and then it's just going to go up the line. Viruses literally don't give a flying fuck about how thick your wallet is.
For a few million dollars I could probably own an operational and stocked prepper bunker in a matter of hours. It's a poor man's fantasy that it'll hit rich and poor alike.
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Considering even the rich and powerful are coming down with the virus, I'm thinking your wallet has no antiviral properties. In fact, among the rich and powerful, there was probably, until flights started being grounded, of being *more* likely of getting infected, because they travel more and are more likely to get exposed.
And let's be pretty honest, most of even the very wealthy people don't have bunkers. As to preppers, they are idiots. Just as many of them were likely exposed during the initial stages of
Holiday Inn Express (Score:3)
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And hotel staff will perform all procedures.
Hang your empty saline bags on your door knob and housekeeping with exchange them with fresh ones, etc ...
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While I'm no thoracic surgeon I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night...
Dibs on the penthouse in Trump Tower (Score:2)
And umm could you please restock the minibar?
Why not use those now-empty college dorm rooms? (Score:1)
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They are considering that in Ohio.
Not only that (Score:2)
Apparently the Army has sent a hospital ship there, naturally also without any HEPA filtering, good for people wounded by bullets or IED, but not for pandemics.
It will be hit as hard as any cruise ship.
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Yeah and apparently that ship is still undergoing repairs and can't sail right now. It's not really needed yet so they could still make it.
But like with the hotels, I assume they'd move trauma patients (from the upcoming TP riots) there and keep the infected in the appropriate facilities.
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Apparently the Army has sent a hospital ship there.
When did the Army get a ship??
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Apparently the Army has sent a hospital ship there, naturally also without any HEPA filtering, good for people wounded by bullets or IED, but not for pandemics.
Just wait for when people realize that there ain't enough ICU, then this ship's equipment will be perfect.
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I saw it claimed elsewhere that it is going to assist with trauma duties to take that load of the hospitals so they can handle the CONVID cases
Why not use cruise ships? (Score:2)
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We already have a cruise ship to do a case study, one is enough.
Vs Streets? (Score:2)
Modular buildings (Score:2)
Modern hotels are build using prefabricated modular building techniques. Each Hotel bedroom is one module build to be compatible to intermodal container for transport and erection. Once the ground work is complete these hotels can be erected in days.
Applying Liberty ship thinking to temporary hospitals.
I've been arguing for days that the production of these should be harnessed, repurposed to erect temporary hospital wards. Modules are also available for dorms, bathroom suites, shower blocks and even minor s
Convert cruise ships instead (Score:1)