Volunteers help build Central Park virus hospital

(31 Mar 2020) Dozens of volunteers from the neighborhood around Central Park are pitching in to help make the tent hospital operational.
One of those is Rachel Olson, who started volunteering after receiving an email from her church, Redeemer Presbyterian Church.
Olson works in consumer electronics marketing, and continues to do her regular job remotely while volunteering in person at the hospital.
The tent hospital with 68 beds is being organized by Samaritan's Purse, a Christian group.
The field hospital, which is expected to open Wednesday, will allow Mount Sinai Hospital on 98th Street and Fifth Avenue — just across the street from the park — additional surge capacity as New York City grapples with an overstretched hospital system.
A 1,000-bed emergency hospital set up at the mammoth Javits Convention Center began taking non-coronavirus patients to help relieve the city's overwhelmed health system. A Navy hospital ship, USNS Comfort, with 1,000 beds that arrived on Monday was expected to begin accepting patients on Tuesday.
The indoor tennis center that is the site of the U.S. Open tournament is being turned into a hospital as well.
For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death.
The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus has climbed past 3,600, eclipsing China's official count. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo reported Tuesday that deaths in New York state had risen more than 300 from the day before, reaching about 1,550, mostly in New York City.

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