The field hospital in Central Park since early April was being dismantled on Monday, a sign of the ebb of the coronavirus pandemic in New York, while another was inaugurated in Washington DC in anticipation of a possible jump in disease in the American capital.
In just over a month, the 68-bed Central Park site will have treated 190 patients with Covid-19, the last of whom was released on May 5, a spokesperson said. The location was chosen because it was across from one of the Mount Sinai group hospitals along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
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Once dismantled and put away in imposing heavyweights, the equipment had to be repatriated to North Carolina, to the warehouse of Samaritan's Purse, the association which had dispatched 250 people on the spot. No further action is planned at this time.
The presence of a team from Samaritan's Purse in New York had sparked controversy, the organization being chaired by evangelist pastor Franklin Graham, son of televangelist pastor Billy Graham. The clergyman notably already estimated that marriage between two people of the same sex was the work of Satan. The association asks its employees and volunteers to sign a document in which they accept that "marriage is exclusively the union of a genetic man with a genetic woman" .
Several elected officials and leaders of associations were moved by the presence of this association and some even asked for his departure. Samaritan's Purse has always stated that it does not discriminate against the people it helps.
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Just under 400 kilometers away, Washington mayor Muriel Bowser on Monday presented another field hospital, ready to be used in the event of an epidemic jump, set up in the Walter E. Washington convention center. . "We hope (...) that we will never come to need this site" of 437 beds, located in the city center, explained the mayor of the American federal capital, during a press conference .
Muriel Bowser is expected to announce this week whether she decides to extend the confinement or not, currently scheduled until May 15. "We would be very very worried if the activities resumed too quickly in any place," she said, while Virginia, nearby, plans a partial reopening on Friday. The city counted Sunday 6.389 positive cases of coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic, which made 328 deaths in the federal capital.
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