This week, New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that work on the plan to convert the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan into a 2,500-bed temporary hospital has been completed. 

The temporary hospital facility is one of four sites currently under construction across the region, facilities that will make up the first phase of an effort launched by the Governor to increase the number of hospital beds across the downstate area. The conversions are being handled by a federal response team led by the Army Corps of Engineers. Additional project partners include: The state of New York, the city of New York, the New York National Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the General Services Administration, the Defense Department, and members of the United States armed forces, according to the the US Department of Defense website.

In the case of the Javits Center, the expansive facility will be used to treat non-COVID-19 patients as part of an effort to more fully dedicate existing ICU capacities toward treating those afflicted with the disease.

The number of New Yorkers suffering from COVID-19 has skyrocketed over the last two weeks, with the number of infected persons doubling every three days as deaths resulting from the disease have risen in kind. Although officials fear that the spread of infection has yet to peak, the current situation has placed a great deal of strain on New York City’s medical professionals and medical facilities, including its morgues.

Governor Cuomo’s plan would bring 1,000 new beds to each of the city’s five boroughs and to surrounding sites in Westchester, Rockland, Nassau, and Suffolk counties. 

Aside from the Javits facility, several of the surrounding county sites are currently under construction. Those sites include facilities at SUNYStony Brook and SUNY Old Westbury, both on Long Island, and at the Westchester Convention Center north of the city. The plan, so far, is to have these additional facilities come online over the next month. 

At a press conference this week, Governor Cuomo also announced the state and Army Corp of Engineers are in the process of identifying four additional sites for temporary hospitals where the Army Corps of Engineers will build additional medical facilities. The facilities are being retrofit according to a design approach crafted by the Army Corp focused on reworking ventilation systems connecting existing dormitory and hotel corridors in order to receive COVID-19 patients.

Those sites include: the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, the Aqueduct Racetrack facility in Queens, CUNY Staten Island, and the New York Expo Center in the Bronx. Those facilities would round out the Governor’s borough-based hospital surge plan and could bring as many as 4,000 additional beds into operation. 

It is up to President Donald Trump to approve the selected sites so that construction can begin, Governor Cuomo’s office writes in a statement published announcing the latest progress for the plan.