PRESS RELEASE: Samaritan’s Purse Deploys Emergency Field Hospital to New York City; Adding Life-Saving Medical Surge Capacity

Sydney, NSW April 1, 2020—Samaritan’s Purse deployed its Emergency Field Hospital to New York City, New York, where the local medical infrastructure is severely overwhelmed. In cooperation with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), New York state officials, and local hospital authorities, Samaritan’s Purse is opening a 68-bed field hospital, specially designed as a respiratory care unit. This response comes one week after Samaritan’s Purse opened an identical unit in Cremona, Italy—making it an unprecedented medical response as two Emergency Field Hospitals are run simultaneously.

An advance team arrived in New York on March 27 to begin assessments and site preparation. The Emergency Field Hospital was trucked from North Carolina on four Samaritan’s Purse tractor-trailers. It will be built and operational April 1. The convoy was followed by doctors, nurses, lab technicians, water and sanitation experts, and other support staff.

““People are dying from the coronavirus, hospitals are out of beds, and the medical staff are overwhelmed” said Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse. “We are deploying our Emergency Field Hospital to New York to help carry this burden. This is what Samaritan’s Purse does—we respond in the middle of crises to help people in Jesus’ Name. Please pray for our teams and for everyone around the world affected by the virus.”

The United States now has the largest outbreak of COVID-19 with nearly half of these cases in New York state. Thousands of new cases are reported each day.

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Media Contact:
Nikita Kumar – [email protected]; 0434 319 722

As Samaritan’s Purse provides critical care in Italy and New York, the disaster response team continues to monitor the developing situation and has the capacity to respond in other locations if needed. Our infectious disease experts have been working in coordination with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to ensure the team is taking necessary precautions.

Samaritan’s Purse Australia and New Zealand responds to physical and spiritual needs of individuals in crisis situations–especially in locations where few others are working. Led by President and CEO Franklin