Boone, NC, – On Saturday, March 28, Samaritan’s Purse deployed its Emergency Field Hospital to New York City, New York, where the local medical infrastructure is severely overwhelmed. In cooperation with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), New York state officials, and local hospital authorities, Samaritan’s Purse will open a 68-bed field hospital, specially designed as a respiratory care unit. This response comes one week after Samaritan’s Purse opened an identical unit in Cremona, Italy—making it an unprecedented medical response for the N.C.-based organization as two Emergency Field Hospitals are run simultaneously.
An advance team arrived in New York on March 27 to begin assessments and site preparation. The Emergency Field Hospital is being trucked from North Carolina on four Samaritan’s Purse tractor-trailers. Once it arrives on-site, it will be built and operational in roughly 48 hours. This convoy’s arrival will be followed with doctors, nurses, lab technicians, water and sanitation experts, and other support staff.
“People are dying from the coronavirus, hospitals are out of beds, and the medical staff are overwhelmed,” said Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse. “We are deploying our Emergency Field Hospital to New York to help carry this burden. This is what Samaritan’s Purse does—we respond in the middle of crises to help people in Jesus’ Name. Please pray for our teams and for everyone around the world affected by the virus.”
The United States now has the largest outbreak of COVID-19 with nearly half of these cases in New York state. Thousands of new cases are reported each day.
Photo: This 68-bed unit has a unique layout with specialized equipment to provide the highest level of respiratory care.
