By Nelson A. King
As SUNY Downstate Medical
Center and University Hospital
of Brooklyn is now dedicated
to only coronavirus (COVID-19)
patients, CNN said Sunday that
it was invited to witness the
scenes inside the Emergency
Room (ER) of the hospital in the
epicenter of the Caribbean community
in Brooklyn.
In an exclusive aired Sunday
night, the cable network said all
the patients that SUNY Downstate
treats now are suffering
from coronavirus.
Downstate is one of three
hospitals in the state ordered by
Gov. Andrew Cuomo to dedicate
itself entirely to dealing with the
pandemic, according to CNN.
It said the volume of people
coming to the ER at Downstate
is lower than before the virus,
“but because they are all suffering
from Covid-19, the patients
are sicker, and the death rate
is high.”
CNN said nearly 25 percent of
the patients admitted to the hospital
with the virus have died.
“It’s not the hospital; it’s
the nature of the disease,” Dr.
Lorenzo Paladino, an emergency
medicine physician, told CNN.
It said these doctors are only
seeing people who are struggling
to breathe, because they’ve contracted
Caribbean L 16 ife, April 10-16, 2020
the virus that’s caused a
pandemic across the globe and
is now heading to a peak in New
York City.
Downstate doctors said more
and more patients are coming to
the hospital by the day.
“It’s relentless,” Dr. Paladino
said.
Of the nearly 400 people
admitted for Covid-19 treatment
at the hospital, CNN said 90
percent of them are over the age
of 45, and 60 percent are older
than 65.
It said the youngest patient
at the hospital was a toddler,
age 3.
“We have some young people
in there in their 20s; not
used to seeing this; and some
had a thousand-mile stare, just
crying,” said Dr. Paladino of
patients seeking treatment for
coronavirus in the ER.
Dr. Cynthia Benson, who
works with Paladino in the ER,
said it’s difficult emotionally to
prepare to have so many patients
that cannot be saved.
“This is what we signed up
for, just not in this volume,” she
told CNN. “You know you may
have a code, maybe on a bad
shift you may have two codes
where you carry that emotion,
and you wonder if you did everything
that you could.
“I think it’s emotionally hard
to prepare for this level of sickness
and suffering and morbidity
and mortality in such a short
period of time,” she added. “I
don’t think any of us are well
prepared for it.”
CNN said 94 people have died
from complications related to
Covid-19 at SUNY Downstate
since the pandemic hit three
weeks ago.
“The hardest part, I think,
for nursing is also we are always
looking to make people better,”
said Cheryl Rolston, a registered
nurse and director of the emergency
department.
“We have to be prepared for
the overwhelming amount of
deaths that we are going to
have,” she added, stating that
it’s hard watching patients suffer
Dr. Rami Nakeshbandi in Downstate’s ER. CNN
without loved ones at their
bedside.
“I had one patient’s son call
me the other day, and he said,
‘my dad is 80-something years
old. I know he’s going to die,
and I’m sad because he’s dying
alone,’” Rolston told CNN.
“You’re driving down New
York Avenue or Nostrand Avenue,
which are pretty busy thoroughfares;
it’s almost crickets,”
said Dr. Robert Gore, an emergency
medicine physician. “But
then, here in the emergency
department, it’s a level of intensity
that you only see in disaster
zones.”
Inside the ER at Downstate Hospital
during the coronavirus outbreak