The Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are converting the Jacob K. Javits Center today into 1,000 temporary hospital beds for coronavirus patients, according to an article on the Commercial Observer website.
Construction of the four temporary field hospitals inside the West Side convention center was expected to be complete in a week to ten days.
Each 250-bed field hospital will occupy roughly 40,000 square feet inside Javits, and the entire facility will be staffed by 320 federal workers.
The governor said FEMA is also looking at adding another 1,000 beds for “a lighter level of medical care than you would get in most hospitals,” which would bring the number of hospital beds in the convention center up to 2,000.