Coronavirus batters New York

Nearly 800 people in New York City have died of COVID-19 since the first infection showed up a month ago. Ambulances have to delay responding to less urgent requests as a record number of 911 calls come in, Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said on Sunday. Mayor Bill de Blasio said hospitals would run out of masks, gowns, and other supplies in a week, but officials don’t expect the outbreak to peak in the city for two or three more weeks. The mayor asked the federal government to deliver 400 more ventilators by Wednesday.

How is the rest of the country helping New York? President Donald Trump first said he was considering a mandatory quarantine of the metropolitan New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut area, then tweeted he would issue an advisory warning people in that region to avoid nonessential travel for two weeks. Samaritan’s Purse is building a 68-bed field hospital in Manhattan’s Central Park to help the city’s overflowing medical facilities, and the U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort arrived in New York Harbor on Monday to treat non-COVID-19 patients.

Dig deeper: Read Marvin Olasky’s analysis of what we should learn from the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak.

Editor’s note: WORLD has updated this report to note the correct number of beds at Samaritan Purse’s field hospital in New York.