One of New York City's most iconic locales is now the site of a respiratory care unit, providing dozens of additional hospital beds to the city as it battles the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Crews began construction of a field hospital over the weekend on Central Park's East Meadow lawn.
The facility will provide 68 beds as city hospitals near capacity due to a flood of patients suffering symptoms of the virus.
By Monday afternoon, over 8,500 people in New York State were hospitalized with COVID-19, including more than 2,000 patients who were in intensive care.
The Central Park field hospital is a partnership between Samaritan's Purse and Mount Sinai Health System.
Additional doctors, nurses and lab techs will be dispatched to run the facility.
Last week, FEMA retrofitted the Javits convention center into a field hospital with an additional 2,000 beds.
The USNS Comfort hospital ship arrived in New York harbor Monday morning, bringing with it an additional 1,000 hospital beds intended to serve non-coronavirus patients who also need hospital care.
New York State counted at least 965 coronavirus deaths and 60,000 confirmed cases statewide as of Monday morning. Over 33,000 of those cases were located in NYC's five boroughs.
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