2020- the CORONAPOCALYPSE (the mission)

Over 2,000 military medical personnel, from all branches, including the Army, Air Force, US Public Health Service, and yes, of course the NAVY (Go NAVY BEAT ARMY!!!!) have all descended upon the city of New York to help assist and offload the local hospitals and emergency departments that have been overwhelmed with COVID19 patients (along, of course, with the normal tail end of flu patients as well as other illnesses, trauma, and other emergencies).  It is truly and honor and a privilege to be here working at "ground zero" of the coronapocalypse in the US.  From the Navy hospital ship (USNS Comfort, where my two trauma surgeons from Iraq are taking care of surgical patients as well as helping to run the ICU) to field/tent hospitals to the Javits Center where I am working, we are truly making a difference in New York City by taking care of over a thousand patients (already), taking some of the pressure off of the already overburdened emergency departments, inpatient wards, and ICU's in the local hospitals here.  (Note: we are limited in the details we can share, but will share what I am able here and you can go online to likely see some more details that come out).

The Javits Center, where I work, is a huge convention center that has been converted to a gigantic field hospital with over 2,500 beds. (For comparison, Maricopa Medical Center, where I work in Phoenix, a Level I Trauma Center and tertiary care hospital, has about 550 beds).  It includes over 2,000 hospital/ward beds, two ICU's, a lab, radiology department, food service, bathrooms/showers for the patients, an administrative department, sick call/employee health, and the intake/triage area where I work.  The link below takes you to an article in the Washington Post that includes video of the interior and its construction:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/javits-center-coronavirus-field-hospital/2020/04/04/50bdbf32-75b2-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html

It is a beautiful facility with amazing capabilities.  Although we are not staffed to utilize the full bed capabilities, we are taking care of hundreds of patients in the facility.  Total numbers when we are all done will likely be in the thousands.  The entrance is where we go through security and screening to ensure we do not have a fever or are symptomatic to get to where we change in to scrubs.

 

 

After changing out of our uniforms, we get into our PPE for the 8 hour shift, including gown, eye protection, gloves, and two masks (an n95 mask followed by a surgical mask).  It is not comfortable wearing it for the 8 hour shifts that I do, but we are lucky as the nurses are doing 12 hour shifts! 

 

 

I, along with the other 3 Navy ER docs, work in the triage/intake area.  We initially screen the patients transferred to the Javits Center, assigning them to the appropriate level of care (ICU vs wards) and a medical team to take care of them.  As the DMO, or "Director of Medical Operations" for the shift, we also answer questions from nursing and physician team leads and help assist with any medical emergencies on the floor teams (i.e. deterioration in patient status).  It is an honor to be a part of the medical teams here making a difference in NYC in terms of increasing the local hospitals' ability to provide COVID and non-COVID care for all the patients in New York!