Roosevelt Island Coler Hospital To Add 350 Beds For Coronavirus Patients Says Mayor Bill de Blasio At Briefing Today - How Will This Effect Vulnerable Residents Currently Living At Coler?

We're radically expanding our health care capacity to meet the coming crisis. We're bringing four facilities online to boost capacity by 1,200 new beds.

— Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) March 16, 2020

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio announced today that the NYC Health & Hospital Corp (HHC) Coler Long Term Care Facility on Roosevelt Island will be adding 350 of the 1200 new beds for the treatment of Coronavirus victims.

According to Mayor de Blasio:

The Coler facility on Roosevelt Island. An HHC facility that was empty. It is being immediately brought back on line 350 beds. It will be ready in approximately a week's time....

Roosevelt Island NYC Council Member Ben Kallos reports:

We need every bed we can find to care for those who may come down with coronavirus. These 350 beds at Coler public hospital can really help provide the critical care that our family, friends, and neighbors may need to recover.

I am proud to represent so many hospitals, including public hospitals like Coler, that can play a pivotal role in treating our most vulnerable.

Once we are through this crisis, we must reverse the damage done by the Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century in 2006 that recommended closure of 9 facilities, affected 57 hospitals and 81 acute care and long-term care facilities removing as many as 4,200 inpatient beds from our healthcare system. We must rebuild a resilient medical system that can run at a fraction of built capacity, ready to take on the next major medical emergency or pandemic.

Roosevelt Island residents know that Coler is not shuttered, at least not yet, but the home to many



of our friends and neighbors.

Coler hospital isn't shuttered! What will happen to the many vulnerable people who live there?! @NYCMayor @NYCHealthSystem @NYGovCuomo @RIOCny @cornell_tech

— Tapan Parikh (@tap2k) March 16, 2020

People live in Coler, by definition the residents of the long term care facility are the most vulnerable to serious COVID-19 complications due to pulmonary disease and other underlying conditions and disabilities. Do not erase Coler residents

— Khadijah (@UpFromTheCracks) March 16, 2020

saw a few reporters refer to Coler Hospital on Roosevelt Island as “shuttered”—this is absolutely not the case, I do outreach there, it’s home to many vulnerable long-term care residents. if it will be used for covid-19 patients, the utmost care needs to be taken to protect them

— sasha jones (@tartikovsky) March 16, 2020

Giving the Mayor the benefit of the doubt, he may have been referring to the closed wings of Coler and not the entire facility. Mayor de Blasio adds:

... we are going to do to expand our capacity. We understand that this curve is moving rapidly. We're going to have to radically expand our health care facilities in New York City and capacity. Again, this is going to be a war basis in New York City. I do not believe the United States government is on a wartime basis right now, I think is painfully evident. If they were, we would already have immense support from federal agencies on the ground right now. I do see a beginning of federal support, but nowhere near what it should be at this point. So, we will do it ourselves to the maximum extent possible. And I've ordered all my colleagues to identify all spaces that can be converted immediately to medical use. We're going to start with those that are most obvious, that already are engaged in health care and either being underutilized or not utilized, and then we're going to go much farther. So, I think you have to think of this in a wartime worldview. You have to think of this as something where you're going to see a massive mobilization to save lives, to help people through their suffering with this disease. A lot of people who are hospitalized, the vast majority of people who are hospitalized will survive, but they'll go through a very difficult experience. Again, basically the numbers keep holding. About 80 percent of everyone who gets this disease does not require hospitalization, has a fairly mild experience. 20 percent have a much more serious experience. Overwhelmingly those folks need hospitalization. Ones who end up with the most serious problems in the ICU. And there is the category where we see ourselves losing people, particularly among the older folks with the preexisting conditions....

UPDATE 10:15 PM:

@BenKallos this is like asking someone to open their doors and add a hospital bed in their homes/apartments. Even though Coler residents live in hospital beds, that is their home/their world. Please reconsider , this could be a disaster for my friends

— Niti Parikh (@designNPS) March 17, 2020

Agree. Have you lost your mind Ben??? Please have mercy on hospita residents and residents on ROOSEVELT ISLAND or we will all be diseased with the CONTAGEOUS VIRUS

— DEVINA GRATZIA (@ECUAHEY) March 17, 2020

And so many other hospitals also. Can we house any of the patients at @cornell_tech instead? Im willing to bring this to whomever I can.

— Tapan Parikh (@tap2k) March 17, 2020

Also, what about Sportspark @RIOCny? The indoor tennis courts? There are lots of spaces on the island and we dont need to displace these residents.

— Tapan Parikh (@tap2k) March 17, 2020

UPDATE 3/17 - Roosevelt Island Historical Society (RIHS) President responds:

As a member of the Coler Community Advisory Board for decades and now the Present of the Coler Auxiliary, I am proud that OEM has selected Coler to step up and re-activate its acute care units. The type or patients to be treated at Coler has not been discussed. There are many persons who need hospitalization for other conditions.

This has always been an island that accepted the poor, sick, afflicted and treated them with decency and respect. We treated AIDS patients here, TB patients and many others over the 42 years I have lived here.

I have spoken to residents of Coler who are under strict quarantine as well as extensive precautions taken for every staff member who works there.

Let's be proud that we are in a community that has a facility that is capable of treating the ill.

UPDATE 3/18:
Coler will not be used for Coronavirus patients but for current low acuity patients in other hospitals to free up space for Coronavirus patients. More here.