New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) is calling on President Trump to activate the Army Corps of Engineers to increase hospital capacity in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The governor cautioned in a New York Times op-ed that the U.S. has not dealt with the pandemic on a national level like other countries, which are still struggling, and predicted the failure of the hospital system is “all but certain.”
“There is now only one question your team must answer for you: Can we slow the spread of the disease to a rate that our state health care systems can handle? The answer increasingly looks like no. But that does not mean we should not try,” he wrote.
Cuomo warned that states cannot build hospitals fast enough as the virus spreads, adding that the U.S. has fewer hospitals beds per 1,000 people than China, South Korea and Italy, and noting that some of them are reaching capacity.