The city’s latest planned makeshift hospital — at the Queens stadium that houses the US Open tennis tournament — will quickly be at “full capacity” after it starts taking coronavirus patients next week, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday.
Hizzoner spoke at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, which will offer the city’s struggling hospitals an additional 350 beds when it’s up and running.
The beds were scheduled to be set up around the courts, with construction of the pop-up hospital starting Tuesday.
“It’s going to help take the pressure off of Elmhurst — we all know for a variety of reasons Elmhurst has been the place that has borne the brunt,” de Blasio said of the hospital.
“Starting next week, this facility will be able to take people from Elmhurst — not folks who need ICU care but other coronavirus patients, bring them over here, remove that pressure immediately.”
He said the city currently has 20,000 staffed hospital beds — and “We now need to triple that number.”