BY ROBERT POZARYCKI
The 82-year-old woman from Ridgewood,
Queens came to Wyckoff Heights Medical
Center, just across the Brooklyn/Queens border,
on March 3, 2020 with breathing diffi -
culty. She had emphysema, and shortness of
breath isn’t unusual among patients with the
lung disease that typically affects smokers.
Shortness of breath, however, is also one
of the more common symptoms of COVID-19
— and the woman’s underlying condition
made her particularly vulnerable to a virus
that tends to attack the lungs and induce serious,
even fatal, cases of pneumonia and lung
scarring.
Sure enough, she tested positive. Her condition
was critical, and only deteriorated further.
A team of emergency medical technicians,
nurses and doctors tended to the woman and
did the best they could to treat her — while
simultaneously exposing themselves to a contagion
for which there was no known cure,
treatment or vaccine, up to that point.
Sadly, their efforts were not enough to
save her; she died on March 13 — becoming
the fi rst New York City resident to offi cially
succumb to COVID-19.
Close to 30,000 more New Yorkers would
suffer a similar fate in the year that followed.
Less than a month after it suffered the
fi rst COVID-19 death in New York City, in
early April, photographers outside Wyckoff
Heights Medical Center captured images
that showed just how badly the pandemic had
struck the hospital, and others like it across
the city.
All day and night, hospital workers in
hazmat gear pushed gurneys carrying the
bagged bodies of COVID-19 victims from the
hospital, transporting them to several refrigerated
trucks parked just outside the emergency
room, along Stanhope Street. The hospital’s
morgue overfl owed with dead patients
to the point that these trailers served as temporary
morgues to store the bodies until funeral
directors could come to claim them on
the families’ behalf.
But nothing could better demonstrate the
horrifi c toll COVID-19 reaped on New York
City between late March and early April than
the sight of those trailers — and the realization
that so many families were in mourning,
and fear.
As ordinary life ceased across New York
City with shutdown and social distancing orders
in place, hospital rooms were fi lling up
with sick patients. Senior citizens 75 years
of age and older suffered the worst, and comprised
most of the fatalities — but the virus
also targeted younger patients with compromised
immune symptoms or pre-existing
conditions such as cancer, heart disease or
diabetes.
Some who contracted COVID-19 never developed
a symptom; most suffered a case of fever,
Lily Sage Weinrieb, 25, a Resident Funeral
Director at International Funeral & Cremation
Services, a funeral home in Harlem,
retrieves a deceased person from a morgue
in a hospital, while working on a night-shift
during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
outbreak, in Manhattan, New York City, New
York, U.S., April 9, 2020. REUTERS/Andrew
Kelly
chills, fatigue, loss of taste and/or smell,
aches and congestion that dissipated after a
few days.
But far too many got such a severe case
that it required more robust medical care
that only hospitalization could provide.
Though most people recovered and went
home, too many who went to the hospital did
not improve, regardless of whatever therapeutic
treatments the staff provided. That
forced doctors to put many of the most severely
sick patients on a ventilator — the
survival rate once someone was intubated
was just 11%.
As COVID-19 spread like fi re across New
York City during March and April, hospitals
across the fi ve boroughs could not keep
up with the demand. Despite the best preparations
made to free up hospital space and
open up additional beds, they quickly fi lled
up. Doctors, nurses and other members of
the hospital staff were strained and tested
like never before.
Medical workers also exhausted their
PPE and other supplies quickly. They were
running out of available ventilators to treat
patients in intensive care.
Cuomo and de Blasio appealed for aid
from the federal government — which was
painfully slow to arrive under the Trump
administration. Then-President Trump had
initially denied the severity of COVID-19,
and once it hit New York, he was not quick to
assist his former home state. Things would
improve in April when Trump dispatched a
naval hospital ship to the city and provided
additional resources.
The city and state, like many others
across the United States, had to fend for
themselves — competing with the rest of
the world to procure masks, PPE and other
supplies for frontline hospital workers. New
York state’s government scrambled to fi nd
ventilators for dying patients wherever they
could.
The daily death toll began to grow on
an exponential scale. Twenty-seven people
died of COVID-19 on March 21, and the number
rose almost every day there after for the
next three weeks.
On March 31, 417 people died of
COVID-19.
Then came April 2020 — by far the deadliest
month of the pandemic. New York
transformed into the epicenter of the global
health crisis almost overnight.
The peak of the outbreak occurred over a
nine-day stretch between April 7-15. In those
nine days, approximately 8,788 New Yorkers
died of COVID-19, according to The New
York Times; the daily death rate for that period
averaged out to 976.
In those nine days, the Empire State had
suffered more than three times the number
of deaths that resulted from the Sept. 11, 2001
terrorist attacks.
Health care workers and other frontline
essential workers suffered mightily. EMS
units were stretched thin, with many of the
rank and fi le also getting sick. At one point,
between March 31 and April 24, the FDNY
had instituted an order limiting resuscitation
efforts by EMS units for cardiac arrests
victims at home due to the thinning staff
and fi lled hospitals.
The NYPD, on April 6, had 20% of its
entire workforce out sick due to COVID-19;
the department lost more than four dozen of
its staff to the virus, including its Chief of
Transportation.
Scores of MTA workers also became sick
and died of COVID-19 while their colleagues
continued running the transit system at full
tilt — even with subway ridership down 90%
at the time — just to keep essential workers
moving.
New York had never faced such darkness.
But glimmers of hope would soon shine
through.
To the rescue
The severity of the COVID-19 pandemic
in New York, however, brought out the best
in the American people.
Teams of medical workers voluntarily
came to New York City to help the overwhelmed
hospitals. That included a convoy
of ambulances and emergency medical
technicians from every corner of the country
that drove into the city to help exhausted
EMS crews.
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Offi ces:Offi ces:offi ces fl oor fl oor COVID-19, One Year Later:
Recalling the darkest spring in
New York City history
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