NEW YORK -- New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's recent announcement that NYC's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center will be transformed into a temporary hospital to combat the Covid-19 pandemic proves a stark reminder of the major disruptions to American life.
Javits, the venue of major home furnishings and area rug fairs such as ICFF, NY Now and the Rug Show, will now, rather than being a showcase of the latest home furnishings and rug trends, will now house a 1,000-bed temporary hospital to increase hospital capacity.
"We have to get that hospital capacity up and we have to get the equipment that we have up. Each of the 250 bed facilities is about 40,000 square feet," Cuomo said in a press breifing from the Javits Center on March 23.. "There will be about 320 federal staff that come to work in those four hospitals where they'll take care of about 1,000 people. The material has already started to arrive. We'll start erecting the equipment upstairs. Luckily, Javits has plenty of space. We've been expanding Javits. This was never an anticipated use, but you do what you have to do. That's the New York way, that's the American way. And we're going to get this done."
Officers from the Department of Homeland Security, the US Navy, and the Army Corps of Engineers are mobilized to begin the work to transform the massive exhibition halls of Javits into a field hospital.
The conversion of Javits to a field hospital has begun and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has started to build a 1,000-bed temporary facility. The New York National Guard, Javits center workers and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expect the temporary hospital facility to begin operating sometime during the week of March 30, 2020.
NY Governor Andrew Cuomo reviews the plans that will be used to convert the Javits convention center into a temporary field hospital.
"We have to get that hospital capacity up and we have to get the equipment that we have up. Each of the 250 bed facilities is about 40,000 square feet. There will be about 320 federal staff that come to work in those 4 hospitals where they'll take care of about 1,000 people. All systems are go here as you can see behind me. The material has already started to arrive. We'll start erecting the equipment upstairs. Luckily, Javits has plenty of space. We've been expanding Javits. This was never an anticipated use, but you do what you have to do. That's the New York way, that's the American way. And we're going to get this done."
China, which's Wuhan region was the epicenter of the pandemic earlier this year, built several temporary hospitals and opened its first on Feb. 12, 2020, closed all 16 temporary hospitals in that region by March 11. So there appears to be a hope that summer Javits events NY Now and the Rug Show New York will go on.