The sign outside Suffolk County Community College’s Ammerman Campus along Nicolls Road. Photo by Heidi Sutton
The coronavirus pandemic has temporarily disrupted life for Suffolk County Community College, but college officials said it hasn’t dampened the spirit and ingenuity of those determined to carry out the college’s mission, make a difference and continue classes and services for students.
The sudden shift of instruction on March 23 from the classroom to 2,903 online classes for Suffolk’s nearly 20,000 students took place in less than two weeks. A herculean task matched by shifting Suffolk’s libraries, advising, counseling, financial aid, and a host of other services to remote operation built on a foundation made by Suffolk’s Information Technology (IT) Department.
“How do you move nearly 3,000 course sections online in only two weeks?” said Suffolk County Community College Interim President Louis Petrizzo. “You ask our faculty to do the impossible and they deliver in record time for our students. We are eternally grateful for the dedication of our faculty, our front-line employees in Public Safety and Plant Operations who pulled together in this time of need.”
Suffolk’s libraries are providing virtual hours, online chat and electronic resources for students.
Counselors and advisors are meeting with students via Zoom, email and phone while Suffolk’s Veterans Affairs resource centers are hosting virtual office hours. Later this month the group will host a virtual meeting and discussion with a World War II veteran who is a Battle of the Bulge survivor and concentration camp liberator. The Zoom meeting is open to all.
The college is also calling every Suffolk student to answer questions and provide direction to resources. More than 13,000 students have been called to date. And, just like all of us, Suffolk students and their families have been affected by the pandemic.
Suffolk’s IT Department distributed more than 300 laptops and dozens of hotspots to students who lacked the technology to log into online instruction and fielded more than 300 technology inquiries from students.
A newly established Suffolk Community College Foundation COVID-19 Emergency Fund has fielded more than 170 students’ applications for support. 90 percent of students who applied cited job loss, as well as family unemployment and related that a family member or members are ill and being treated for coronavirus. Any enrolled student can apply for emergency funds.
“We are here for our students because we’re all in this together,” said Sylvia A. Diaz, executive director of the Suffolk Community College Foundation.“Our generous donors, our faculty & staff, alumni and corporate partners have all pitched in to help students facing financial hardships because of the pandemic.”
Contributions to the student COVID-19 Emergency fund are being accepted at: https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/sccf-covid19.
SCCC moved activities from its two health clubs online, providing access to a YouTube hosted exercise regimen, and the athletics department is hosting online gaming competitions, while also emphasizing that everyone needs to exercise.
The college’s sustainability department has continued conservation efforts by celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day with the Take 1 Less challenge. Participants are challenged to use one less plastic item a day and document their efforts with photos that are shared on the college’s social media channels. On Earth Day, a virtual nature walk with the Suffolk County Community College Ammerman Campus Environmental Club will take place via Zoom.
Several weeks after viral hotspot testing sites in Suffolk County opened, the percentage of positive tests is coming back higher than for other areas.
After 1,077 people were tested in six sites, including Huntington Station and Wyandanch, 577 people tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19.
“That is definitely a lot higher than the overall number in the county, which stands at 40 percent,” County Executive Steve Bellone (D) said on his daily conference call with reporters.
By testing in these communities, the county hopes not only to get an idea of the rate of infection in these areas, but also to communicate the importance of social distancing and isolating for people who have positive tests.
“By doing the testing, we have the direct one-on-one contact with patients and it is with Spanish speaking health professionals who can have an effective dialog,” Bellone said. The communication is “well-received by the patients.”
For some residents who live in more densely populated areas or who share a home with others who might have underlying medical conditions or whose age makes them vulnerable to the virus, the county has offered housing on a case-by-case bases, Bellone said. That has included hotels and shelters.
These situations could include people who are “coming out of a hospital where there is an issue in a home with vulnerable people,” Bellone said. “It’s not just with hotspot areas.”
Bellone also shared the results of broader testing throughout New York that Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has conducted to determine the rate of infection, which could include people who were asymptomatic or who had mild symptoms that dissipated quickly enough not to merit testing.
Based on preliminary data, Suffolk County could have about 250,000 people who have the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
If that’s the case, “that tells us that there are a huge number of people who have had the virus and didn’t know they had it,” Bellone said. A scaled up testing program to detect the presence or the virus or of antibodies, along with an aggressive contact tracing program, could enable the county to contain the virus.
That could mean that Suffolk County could “reopen our economy with protective measures in place,” Bellone said. The testing and contact tracing, which former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Johns Hopkins University committed to supporting, are “very good news,” with the caveat that the county needs to “see those full results,” Bellone added.
The number of people who tested positive in the county in the last day was 709, which means that more than 30,000 people have received positive tests for the coronavirus.
The closely-watched hospitalization number dropped again in the last day, falling by 37 to 1,340 residents. The number of people in Intensive Care Unit beds has also declined by five to 494.
For the second straight day, about 10 percent of the population of people with COVID-19, or 131 people, have been discharged from the hospital.
The death toll also continues to climb towards 1,000, with 33 people dying from complications related to COVID-19, bringing the number for the county to 959.
On the supply front, the county executive’s office distributed over 24,000 pieces of personal protective equipment yesterday. The county also received 80,000 ear loop masks from New York State.
The procurement team in Bellone’s office received 27,000 isolation gowns, which have been in short supply and high demand.
The Stony Brook University Hospital extension, which was an all-out effort as the hospitalization was climbing dramatically, is completed. The beds at the facility are not occupied.
“I don’t think there are plans right now” to use those beds, Bellone said. “We are working to prevent a second wave rom happening. We know that has happened in past pandemics.”
Dr. Bettina Fries and her neighbor Agjah Libohova holding new face shields that will soon be put into the PPE pipeline at Stony Brook Medicine and many metro area hospitals. Photo from SBU
Her forecast calls for a better summer and a difficult fall and winter.
Bettina Fries, the Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Stony Brook Renaissance School of Medicine, sees improvements in the battle against COVID-19 over the next few months, and then a return of stormy weather in the winter.
There will be “much, much less cases in the summer. The reason is that people are more outside and there is less tightness together, but we have to be careful.”
Indeed, a decline in cases of COVID-19 won’t signal a victory over the virus. As the fall approaches, a second wave could exacerbate the typical arrival of the seasonal flu.
“We have a hard winter ahead of us,” Fries acknowledged. As one of several principal investigators involved in efforts to develop an effective treatment for the virus, Fries is working to mitigate the effect of the pandemic.
Fries is overseeing Stony Brook’s involvement in a trial of Regeneron’s drug Sarilumab, which blocks the binding of interleukin-6 to its receptor. The Food and Drug Administration has already approved the drug to treat juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and for the cytokine storm brought on by the treatment of acute leukemia with CAR-T cells.
The work at Stony Brook is a part of Regeneron’s tests in 50 medical centers. At this point, Fries has recruited three of the six patients who will receive the treatment.
Stony Brook is also involved in other studies of potential therapeutics. Sharon Nachman, the chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, has given Remdesivir to two patients with severe symptoms. The drug, which was developed to treat Ebola and Marburg, targets and inhibits the RNA polymerase.
Meanwhile, Elliot Bennet-Guerrero, the Medical Director for Perioperative Quality and Patient Safety for Stony Brook Medicine plans to start a clinical trial of donated, post-convalescent plasma from COVID-19 patients. This approach dates back over 100 years, when serum made from immunized animals helped treat diphtheria.
While each of these approaches could provide relief and extend the lives of people suffering from the virus, Fries doesn’t expect a return to some semblance of normal until the development of a reliable vaccine, which could take another year or more.
Fries sees a potential legal battle developing as countries race to produce a vaccine. She believes the World Health Organization is the group most likely to succeed in ensuring that any effective treatment benefits all of humanity and not just the company or country in which it originated.
“The only organization in my opinion that would be able and have international support to oversee this and make sure this vaccine becomes accessible to everyone and is not getting hung up in patent or licensing disputes is the World Health Organization,” Fries said.
Fries said she believes the international community needs to come to an agreement well before scientists develop an effective vaccine.
“We need everybody in this world to become vaccinated,” Fries said. “It’s really important before we have a vaccine that the international community starts agreeing on what we are going to do if company XYZ in South Korea has the super vaccine first.”
Fries suggested that the American withdrawal from the WHO could prove to be a costly mistake to public health and to global efforts to combat the pandemic.
“Chances are high that the Chinese or Germans or South Koreans will have a vaccine before we do,” Fries said.
As for COVID-19, Fries said the consensus for the infection rate has changed over the last few months, as the virus has spread throughout the world. Indeed, each person who gets the virus now spreads it to about 5.7 other people, which is considerably higher than the rate of between 2.2 and 2.7 researchers had expected from earlier information.
While people who have endured life-threatening symptoms can become infectious, people are generally infectious before they are symptomatic.
As states and countries consider reopening from quarantines, lockdowns and shelter-in-place mandates, Fries said the most effective approach would likely involve a modified reopening with behavioral changes.
Hospitals and urgent care centers can and have changed the way they interact with residents who come into the emergency rooms. The longer-term transition for other businesses and enterprises is more challenging.
Bringing students back to colleges remains a difficult decision that schools around the country face over the next few months, particularly amid a situation in which information about hospitalization, mortality, and testing change by the day.
Sports like swimming and tennis may be able to resume without too many public health alterations, while opera and movie theaters may be more limited in how they can entertain audiences.
Separately, many people have already altered their health care routines, avoiding practices and procedures that could extend the quality and years of their lives. People may not have gotten their chemotherapy and may have missed the chance to get bypass surgery or stents.
“There’s collateral damage we don’t even know yet,” Fries said, “That’s going to be huge.”
Even if the mortality rate is closer to 0.5 percent, the overall number of infections and hospitalizations have “hijacked” the health care system, which can lead to a lower level of care for everyone else, Fries said.
The health care system has been “completely emergency-based for the last 50 days,” Fries observed.
As the country and world approach what might be more of a summer reduction in the numbers, Fries urged ongoing vigilance, even if there are no new cases for an entire month. She suggested that governmental oversight and regulation in connection with a strong health department can help manage through the next wave of cases.
The health care system has had to conquer the seemingly intractable problem of viral deaths, such as from the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV.
COVID-19 is “very similar in the sense that there was so much despair at the beginning,” Fries said. “When you don’t have a cure, you need to attack a disease with different methods and be okay that you’re not going to cure it, but that you’re going to contain it.”
Fries urged patience as people confront the uncertainty ahead. The ongoing use of masks can help people confront the public health threat that she hopes a vaccine helps conquer.
One of the many clear lessons from this crisis, Fries said, is that those dealing with the public health threat needed to approach it with an understanding of the disruption to the supply chains, with everything from personal protective equipment shortages to ventilators in the right places to adequate staffing of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals.
The garment industry in New York is starting to make plastic coats, Fries said. “Why didn’t we start making that eight weeks ago?”
The same approach also applies to medicines. A multi-disciplinary approach using artificial intelligence could anticipate what hospitals and urgent care centers need, bringing the necessary and vital field of supply chain logistics into this enormous effort.
Ultimately, Fries expects a balance between best practices to keep people safe and the human need for interaction and full engagement professionally and socially.
“We can’t have everybody stay at home,” Fries said. “We have to find a new way of interacting and seeing each other.”
This article was amended April 24 to change the nature in which the drug Remdesivir works.
LI State Veterans Home has gone through much hardship since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Image from Google Maps
By Rich Acritelli
“Never was so much owed by so many to so few.”
Fred Sganga, right, hands a plaque to Battle of the Bulge veteran Tom Struminski at an event last year. File photo by Kyle Barr
These words of heroic national service by Winston Churchill Aug. 20, 1940, have been surely witnessed by U.S. citizens since the start of the COVID-19 health crisis. Feeling immensely proud of his staff and echoing these powerful sentiments is Executive Director Fred Sganga of the Long Island State Veterans Home at Stony Brook. He stated just how thankful and proud he was of his 675 employees who have done everything possible to treat the veterans of this facility. From the moment that this virus hit the nation, these health care workers and support staff are on the front lines to ensure that this nursing home has taken care of their patients through the terrible rise of COVID-19.
Currently, there are five New York State Veterans Homes that are facing staggering difficulties since the initial spread of the virus. While this pandemic has impacted all age groups, older generations are the most susceptible from being impacted by the ferocity of this sickness. For over 19 years, Sganga has led the vets home through many difficult moments, but it’s possible this scenario could be the most challenging point of his career. On March 10, Sganga ordered the complete lockdown of operations the nursing home, restricting access from the outside. Looking at the website of this hospital, it has been a transparent effort by Sganga and his staff to speak about the daunting issues that has faced both the workers and residents of the veteran’s home.
Covered in protective gear from head to toe, masks and shields, the staff has been working in hazardous conditions to treat veterans who have greatly sacrificed for this nation. Sganga said he is incredibly proud of his faculty’s ability to not only take care for their patients, but to serve as surrogate family members. For over 40 days, many of these residents have not seen their loved ones and the doctors, nurses, aides, housekeeping and maintenance cadre have engaged these older men and women with a consistent foundation of love and support.
One of the biggest concerns that Sganga’s staff must handle with the patients who are already battling serious ailments and respiratory problems. The sickness has impacted the COVID units of this nursing home with 57 residents to date that have tested positive. Sganga identifies how this hospital has dealt with the positive cases by not allowing cross contamination between the various health care units. He considers this a deadly “chess game” where he’s made to use every possible strategy to contain the expansion of the virus within the hospital.
These heavy health strains on the elderly population are apparent as the vets facility, which as of press time has lost 41 people, according to Sganga. While this is a tumultuous time, Sganga has continually stressed the determination of his staff to show up to work every day and to help those men and women residents that have sacrificed for the defense of the nation. Like that of the families, these staff members grieve at the loss of residents that they have grown to known through many special bonds. They have had to adapt to the many unknowns of the virus and decipher through the multitudes of guidance coming from the state and federal government. And through the spirit of cooperation amongst the team, every person plays an important role in carrying out these policies to protect the residents during these harrowing times.
Much can also be said about the wonderful job that Sganga has done during his tenure at this home for almost two decades. Vietnam vet and Rocky Point VFW Post Commander Joe Cognitore said, “Sganga demonstrates the highest traits that a leader of any major organization can exhibit to lead and care for others. During the height of this crisis, he has the pulse of every staff member and the people that reside in this home. He is a self-starter and a delegator of plans to properly guard against this massive epidemic. Words are not enough to express his strength as a decisive figure to always assist others.These sentiments are presented through my experiences as a patient that was flawlessly treated by this hospital. His spirit is easily seen through the endearing qualities of all his personnel that are always motivated to do their duty.”
Once this tragic virus began to escalate in widespread positive cases and deaths, the vets home has followed many directives from the U.S. Center for Disease Control, New York Department of Health, the Veterans Administration and Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Almost every day, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) speaks at daily press conferences outlining the risks of the elderly in the nursing homes and the devoted care in places like that of Stony Brook that has continually met their growing needs.
Presently, there are over 45,000 deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S., with New York making up a third of these figures by nearly 15,000. Out of these numbers, experts say nearly a fifth of virus deaths have come from nursing facilities, and the fear is that more could to be taken from the brutality of the virus. Right now, there are health care workers and patients that have deteriorated quickly and passed away without any major signs of this sickness.
Until recently, there were not enough testing kits for nursing homes like that of the Long Island State Veterans Home to even test their own workers. Cuomo recently stated that the goal of New York was to start testing 40,000 people every day, but there are many workers that were unable to know if they were safe from this virus. Through the entire interview, Sganga could not thank his staff enough for the absolute determination of his colleagues to stay the course in helping the elderly fight this illness. It has been a hard time for this staff, but they never shied away from their ultimate mission of protecting these men and women that sacrificed greatly for this nation. According to Cognitore, “even during the darkest moments of this crisis, Sganga’s employees and volunteers have diligently worked above and beyond the call of duty to protect the veterans against this uphill medical war to defeat the ongoing spread of COVID-19.”
Rich Acritelli is a social studies teacher at Rocky Point High School and an adjunct professor of American history at Suffolk County Community College.
From left, John Brittelli, Jon Longtin, and Dimitris Assanis, who are working on an early prototype of the CoreVent 2020. Photo from Stony Brook University.
Working against time and a potential shortage of life-saving ventilators, Stony Brook University scientists designed their own version, which they hoped no one would have to use.
In the course of 10 days, a team led by Jon Longtin, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences Associate Dean of Research and Entrepreneurship and professor of mechanical engineering, designed, built and tested a cheaper and easier ventilator, which they called CoreVent2020. They have spoken with a company in Shirley called Biodex Medical Systems, which could make as many as 30 of the originally crafted machines per day.
“It was an all-encompassing task,” Longtin said. “When we started this, COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially in the New York area. By following the curve at that point, we were going to run out of ventilators in a matter of one or two weeks.”
Indeed, just a few weeks ago, Suffolk County and New York State were still climbing the curve, without knowing when the peak would arrive. That meant that each day, the number of people hospitalized increased dramatically, as did the number of people who needed ventilators in the Intensive Care Unit.
The parts for the system Longtin, John Brittelli, a clinical professor in the Respiratory Care Program, and Dmitris Assanis, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Stony Brook, created cost about $2,000. This includes the cost for the arduino control panel, which is a computer board people have programmed to run their washing machines and to turn on lamps. The total cost compares with a price tag of about $30,000 for a regular ventilator.
The CoreVent 2020 favors a hospital setting, Longtin said, because it runs on medical compressed oxygen and compressed air.
“Most hospitals have compressed air, which we were able to use to make the design much simpler,” Longtin said.
Chris Paige, an anesthesiologist at Stony Brook University Hospital who worked on the ventilator, coined the term CoreVent, which suggests a “core” set of needed capabilities, but nothing more, Longtin explained in an email.
The researchers wanted to create a machine that didn’t have any proprietary parts, which would make the manufacture and distribution of the system considerably easier. The researchers wanted to make sure they could get the parts they needed and could still move forward even if a particular part from a specific manufacturer wasn’t available.
“Anything we used, we could buy from a number of different suppliers,” Longtin said. “As long as the specifications were the same, the design was simple and reliable.”
Longtin said the limits of time and resources, akin to the engineers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration who helped bring home the damaged Apollo 13 rocket with its three-member crew, were omnipresent in designing and building the alternative ventilator system.
Longtin was grateful for the help and support of people in the engineering and medical side.
Longtin said he appreciated the opportunity to work together with his colleagues in the medical community and not only to build this alternative ventilator but also to build relationships across the Stony Brook community.
“I look forward to building upon these new relationships for other projects,” Longtin said. “Engineering and medicine will take a serious look at this and ask how we can work together to be more prepared in the future.”
St. Charles Hospital in Port Jeff plays "Here Comes the Sun" every time a patient is discharged during the coronavirus pandemic. Photo by Kyle Barr
St. Charles Hospital ICU nurse Kacey McIntee, walking through the halls of a hospital in the midst of a pandemic, is just one ofscores of RNs who have watched their world flip the wrong way around.
Where once the hospital had one Intensive Care Unit, now it has three. Every time she gets to work, she slips into hospital-issued scrubs and she’s assigned to one of the three units. Every single bed is housing a patient on a ventilator, nearly 40 in all. She’s bedecked in a mask, hair covering and face shield.
Nursing Assistant Martha Munoz is working at St. Charles Hospital during the pandemic
Typically, the ratio is two ICU patients to one ICU nurse. However, now there are cases where she cares for up to three patients, alongside a helper nurse. She starts her day by looking at her assigned patients’ charts, and then spends the rest of her 12-hour shift doing her best to keep these patients, many in such dire straits, alive.
“A lot of times you can kind of expect something is going to go bad just based on blood values alone,” she said. “We mentally prepare ourselves for the worst-case scenario with our patients.”
It’s a common story among many medical centers, but local hospitals St. Catherine of Siena Medical Center in Smithtown and Port Jefferson’s St. Charles, both in the Catholic Health Services system, have been on the front lines of fighting the virus for longer than others, having seen their first COVID-19 positive patients March 8.
Jacquelina VandenAkker, a 33-year veteran respiratory therapist at St. Charles and Port Jeff resident, said while the past week has shown what seems to be a plateauing in the number of new cases, the first 10 days of the virus “was hell. You didn’t know the end of it.”
“We felt it was literally such a war zone. You knew you could be a victim to it because you don’t understand it,” she said.
Hospital officials confirmed there were a number of staff who have contracted COVID-19, but declined to release the number of employeeswho have been infected, citing that staff did not want it known if they’ve been previously infected.
“We see a lot of deaths,” the respiratory therapist said. “I take the same unit. I know my patients. We start to understand the disease a lot more.”
McIntee, a Sound Beach resident, knows the pain and suffering of the COVID-19 patients suffering. It’s hard not to become entangled in the lives of these people, knowing the pain of suffering when the family can only communicate via tablet computer and online video chats.
“Nurses are really, really good at coping mechanisms,” she said. “One of the most useful ones is humor and the other is detachment. We cannot picture our loved ones in the bed — if we hear that one of our loved ones is sick with COVID, all bets are off, we are a mess.”
When it comes to that, when what has universally been the once inconceivable is happening moment to moment, McIntee said they rely on their fellow nurses.
“It’s almost as if we’re all in war together, and we have this bond for life that we will always be connected together, that we had these experiences that really nobody else in the world can experience except during this time,” she said.
The Initial Wave and Beyond
Jim O’Connor, the president of St. Charles and chief administrative officer of St. Catherine of Siena, said hospitals faced initial difficulties but hope things continue to look up.
“Both St. Charles and St. Catherine had their first COVID-19 patient on the same day,” he said. “We struggled to keep up with it and the personal protective equipment we needed in that first week. Thankfully we seem to have gotten our sea legs.”
Dr. Jeffrey Wheeler, the director of St. Charles Hospital Emergency Department
Only about 25 percent of patients who are diagnosed require hospitalization, but of that 25 percent, 50 percent require ICU care, and many of them require a ventilator, O’Connor said.
Even before Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) mandates shutting down all essential businesses, hospital admin said they saw what they call a “surge” of patients.
Bonnie Morales, the director of infection prevention for St. Catherine, said she and other specialists at hospitals around Long Island had started preparing for the “what ifs” a few weeks before it finally came, but even then, it was hard to estimate just how much it would overtake the entire health care system.
“I would have to say we were prepared, but that line list [of staff procedures] I went back to in the beginning, has grown from a page to three pages long,” she said.
The precautions for reducing infections became one of the most supreme considerations with both patients and staff, she said. Morales, a Selden resident, said the average patient on “transmission-based precautions” which were before only meant to help patients and staff avoid contact, has now gone from 20 to 30, up to over 100 that are currently on these transmission-based precautions because of the virus.
The hospitals had what the admin called a surge plan, but as the St. Charles president put it, “a man plans, and God laughs.” Learning just how many beds they would have to increase to was staggering, but he thanked the admin team who worked with barely little notice to start the process of acquiring more beds and space.
After Cuomo announced an executive order mandating hospitals increase their bed capacity by at least 50 percent, St. Charles and St. Catherine have boosted the number of beds to 243 in St. Charles and 296 beds at St. Catherine.
Mike Silverman, the COO at St. Catherine, said early on the hospitals decided to close access to the public. It was something that was unpopular to start, but in hindsight has been a smart decision.
Silverman only joined the hospital little more than two months ago and has had a trial by fire in the truest sense of the phrase.
“I don’t think anybody thought this was going to happen,” he said. “There was no playbook for this … It’s a lot of people doing what needs to be done,” he said.
O’Connor said the hospitals hit a high in the number of patients in the previous weeks, but since they have been climbing, inch by strenuous inch, off of that peak. Since the start of the outbreak, St. Charles has gone from eight ventilators to nearly 37 at peak. St. Catherine had 35 at peak. Each hospital has transformed its space to accommodate the massive number of critical patients by creating two new ICUs in each. All elective surgeries have been suspended and those workers have been moved to aid COVID-19 patients.
“There’s definitely some angst,” Silverman said. “We know how many people are dying in the state, and we would see this many deaths in a week. It’s tough, whether it’s at work, whether its friends or friends’ families.”
Michelle Pekar, in purple scrubs, is part of the St. Charles Emergency Department. Photo by Marilyn Fabbricante
Both admin and health staff agreed the community has done an incredible amount of support for the health care workers. There have been consistent donations of meals, snacks and drinks. There have been a rollout of homemade masks and PPE supplies as well, along with cards and notes thanking the health care workers for all they do.
Still, to say it hasn’t taken an emotional toll would be wrong.
“It has been very tough on the staff because there is a very high mortality rate for people on ventilators,” O’Connor said. “What compounds it we weren’t allowed to have visitors so that really adds a whole different isolation for the patient and the families.”
The hospital has been using tablet computers to connect patients with family members at home, but it has also meant having to give them difficult news about those family members remotely.
“They have their own fears understandably about it. They have their own families they go home to that they worry about spreading it to,” he said. “I give them so much credit for them to put themselves at risk to be in a room with someone with a contagious disease.”
There have been moments of hope throughout the day in between the darkness. Every time a patient comes off a ventilator, the hospital plays “Breathe” by Faith Hill over the loudspeaker. When a patient is dismissed from the hospital, they then play the classic Beatles song “Here Comes the Sun.”
Hospitals’ PPE
O’Connor said the hospitals sterilize the PPE used by hospital workers at the end of each shift, and after the N95 is used three times then it is discarded, though if it becomes “soiled or contaminated” then it is discarded before that. Normally, such masks are not designed to be reused, but with supplies tight, hospitals and other medical centers have been looking to get as much use out of equipment as possible.
Susie Owens of St. Charles Hospital delivered a special message to her colleagues in chalk. Photo from St. Charles Facebook
“We know it is not a perfect system,” O’Connor said. “Nobody expected to have this patient volume, but I think we’ve done a good job, but is it perfect? No.”
The federal Office of Emergency Management has added to supplies, along with donations from companies and other local individuals. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has made guidelines for decontaminating such equipment, and hospital administration said they are following those guidelines. Catholic health systems announced earlier this month they had created an ultraviolet light sterilization system for masks in CHS hospitals.
The New York State Nurses Association has taken issue with the hospital’s practice of reusing such PPE as N95 masks after they’ve been sterilized. The union points to mask manufacturer 3M, who said there were no disinfection methods that would kill the virus and maintain effectiveness, though the CDC’s website cites numerous sources related to the positive results of disinfecting such masks.
Though a union representative could not be reached by press time, nurse representatives have spoken to other news outlets saying that both hospitals lacked PPE supplies, and that unlike systems, nurses in St. Charles and St. Catherine were made to wear gowns for an entire shift that are meant to be disposed of after one patient encounter.
McIntee said at the start of the pandemic, things were confused with PPE, with the CDC changing its guidelines constantly. Regarding gowns, she said hospital workers have a choice, they can either spray down reusable gowns with a cleaning solution in between patients, use disposable blue/plastic gowns, or the so-called bunny suits, the full-body white suits with a hood. With face shields, there are no other choices than rinsing it with solution.
Now, McIntee said if a worker wears an N95 mask continuously throughout the day in a 12-hour shift, they can discard them. If they wear them intermittently throughout the day, then they are bagged and sent to be sterilized at night. Sterilized masks then can be worn intermittently three more days before they are discarded.
“Not once have I ever had an issue with the N95 masks being told ‘no, you can’t have one,’” she said. “I’ve always been able to have access to any PPE I wanted … Now I think we have a system down, and it’s less anxiety.”
St. Catherine April 22 accepted a donation of gowns and masks from the Kings Park Chamber of Commerce, and Morales said the bevy of donations they have received have truly helped in the fight against COVID-19. The hospital has received donations of tie back and bunny suits.
Regarding St. Catherine staff reusing gowns, Morales said “We are giving out supplies for the staff to utilize and they have what they need in order to take care of their patients.”
O’Connor said the hospitals have been doing multiple things to aid the front line workers, including bringing in agency staff and repurposing staff from outpatient to inpatient services to add more hands on deck. The hospitals have developed quiet rooms for staff to catch their breath, and Silverman said St. Catherine has a service where staff can purchase basic items, they have little time to get from working long days during the pandemic.
“It would be very foolish for us to not keep our staff safe,” O’Connor said. “Why would we possibly not be doing anything we can to keep them safe?”
Cars line up at the Stony Brook coronavirus testing site. Photo by Kyle Barr
The closely watched number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 fell below 1,400 for the first time in weeks, as 10 percent of the people in the hospital were discharged in the last day.
The net decline in hospitalizations was 57 people, bringing the total to 1,377.
“That’s another positive milestone we are hitting,” County Executive Steve Bellone (D) said on his daily conference call with reporters.
The number of people in the Intensive Care Unit also declined by two people, falling below 500.
“This is a continuation of positive signs,” but the county has “a long way to go to beat this thing,” Bellone said.
The number of people who have left the hospital in the last day increased to 141.
“We want to see that number as high as possible,” Bellone said, as he wished those who had returned to their homes a continued recovery.
Meanwhile, the county is adding another hotspot testing site and is planning to open a facility in Coram at the Elsie Owens Health Center this Friday.
The number of people who have tested positive for the virus continues to rise, with 844 people testing positive in the last day, bringing the total positive tests to 29,588.
According to figures on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s (D) web site from the State Department of Health, the number of Suffolk County residents who died in the last 24 hours from complications related to COVID-19 rose by 38 to 926.
The deaths are “beyond anything we could have imagined at the starts of this across Long Island,” Bellone said.
With many groups questioning when the general landscape will open up again, Cuomo announced a new effort to test and trace people to determine who may have COVID-19 and who they may have had contact with. The effort will be headed up by former city mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The governor said it will take an “army” of tracers. Bloomberg is putting up over $10 million for the effort. Over 35,000 SUNY and CUNY medical students will be boots on the ground. The state has 500 tracers currently, but could need many thousands more.
As residents deal with the economic fallout from the pandemic and the shutdown, Bellone urged people to fill out a mortgage relief survey on the county’s web site, at suffolkcountyny.gov. He would like to highlight what financial institutions are doing to “make sure they are doing the right thing,” Bellone said.
He urged residents and businesses to share their situations. If residents are struggling with the site, he suggested they can receive assistance by calling 311.
Bellone cited two recent police actions that resulted in arrests. Police arrested Matthew Christianson, a 21-year old resident of North Babylon. They charged him with nine counts of grand larceny, four counts of criminal possession of stolen property and several other infractions for a crime spree that started on April 14 and ended with his arrest.
In the Deer Park Business District, First Precinct Sergeant Robert Desanto saw a car with inadequate headlights at 12:35 a.m. When he pulled the car over, he saw glass on the back bumper and numerous cartons of cigarettes and boxes of vape pens inside. The 1st Squad detectives arrested 52-year-old Stanley Emerson of Brentwood, 32-year-old Keith Pasha of Bay Shore and 36-year-old Jacqueline DiPalma of Hauppauge and charged them with burglary in the third degree.
Police allege they drove their car through the front window of a store to steal the merchandise.
“To anyone who thinks they will take advantage of this situation, and that somehow the police will be distracted, think again,” Bellone said.
For the first time in six days, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 in Suffolk County rose, defying a positive trend for the area.
The number of people hospitalized climbed by 23 to 1,434.
“I wouldn’t put too much stock in one day’s number,” County Executive Steve Bellone (D) said on his daily conference call with reporters. “The question will be, ‘are we plateauing at a lower level, or is this a one day blip?’”
The number of people in Intensive Care Unit beds declined by 5 to 501.
On the positive side, 68 people were discharged from hospitals in the county.
“We’re very happy to see that number,” Bellone said, although it is lower than it’s been in the last few days.
The number of people who have died from complications related to coronavirus continues to rise, although that number is lower than it’s been recently as well. An additional 29 people have died in the last 24 hours in the county, bringing the total residents who have died from the virus to 888.
Bellone said the county distributed another 100,000 pieces of personal protective equipment yesterday, bringing the total to 2.5 million since the crisis began.
Bellone thanked all those who have helped provide services through Suffolk 311. The number of calls since the pandemic hit the island on March 9th is now 20,000. On an average day before the crisis, the number was closer to 100 per day, while that has now climbed to closer to 650 per day.
“I want to thank the team that has done a terrific job,” Bellone said.
Bellone thanked Hint Water for donating water to first responders, which his office has helped distribute.
He also thanked the Suffolk County Police Department for continuing to do its job amid the pandemic. Indeed, the department arrested Jesus Vazquez for allegedly committing four burglaries in Bay Shore and Brentwood last week.
Looking for positive signs during the ongoing coronavirus crisis, Bellone found it today when he visited Joe Zito of West Babylon, who celebrated his 100th birthday.
For the county executive, the celebration was a “personal sign of hope.”
District Attorney Tim Sini (D). File photo by Victoria Espinoza
By Leah Chiappino
Suffolk County District Attorney Tim Sini (D) hosted a Town Hall Meeting via Zoom on Thursday, with over 300 constituents in attendance.
Sini first took a moment to acknowledge the difficulties the pandemic is having on people’s mental health and offered condolences to those who know someone who has lost their life to the virus.
“This is more than an inconvenience and will have a long-term impact on mental health, especially with those who have pre-existing conditions and substance abuse disorders,” he said.
The District Attorney, who himself tested positive for COVID-19 March 24, says he has made a full recovery after self-isolating for two weeks, while experiencing mild symptoms such as the loss of smell and taste. He added his diagnosis was not surprising, given the high contact nature of his position
“As of March 16, I was still in court, and doing community outreach and public engagement,” he said. “I am definitely one of the lucky ones.”
Sini is participating in an antibody testing program at Stony Brook Hospital to see if his blood plasma can be found with antibodies for the virus. He encouraged other survivors of the virus to do the same.
Sini reported that violent crime has seen a 24.3 percent reduction, and most other major crimes are down with the exception of commercial burglaries and motor vehicle theft. He says the rise commercial burglaries makes sense, as businesses are shut down and people are taking advantage. His office is coming up with a strategy to address the increase in the coming weeks. However, since March 23, 130 out of 188 handcuffed arrests have been the result of a domestic or child abuse crime.
“We recognize this challenge and we’ll come up with strategies to combat it,” Sini said. He added that prosecutors and victims advocates are mean to get in contact with those who have reported a domestic crime. They are also in coordination with safe shelters for domestic violence victims, most of whom are running and working with hotels if needed. The county has also granted an automatic extension on orders of protection until a victim’s next court date, or until a judge changes it. Victims can text 911 for help or call 631-853-4138 to obtain an order of protection.
The district attorney’s office is assisting enforcement of social distancing guidelines, as part of New York State on PAUSE executive order, made effective March 22. Sini said they would prosecute those who don’t heed warnings by Suffolk County Police, code enforcement officers or village Police, with charges of obstruction of governmental administration and/or disorderly conduct.
“If someone needs to be taught a lesson or made an example of, we’re willing to do that,” he said.
Throughout the call, Sini reassured the DA’s Office will continue operate at its fullest capacity
“We are getting things done,” he said. “You have enough to worry about, whether it be health, homeschooling your children, or finances. One thing you do not have to worry about is whether or not the DA’s office is keeping you safe.”
Sini said his office is continuing to invest in technology and update their protocol to ensure employees can work from home effectively. As of March 16, 80 percent of employees at the DA’s office was working from home, and the entire staff was working from home as of March 17. Suffolk County was the first County in New York state to allow essential hearings and arraignments to be done via Skype, with the necessary paperwork being shared via email.
Sini added the office is taking the time to invest in professional development and zoom-based training. 115 employees have taken Spanish language classes. The bureau is also reviewing strategy, policy development and long-term planning.
According to the district attorney, The Financial and Money-Laundering Bureau is aggressively vetting Personal Protective Equipment suppliers to the county to ensure there are no scams. The county has obtained and distributed 2.2 million pieces of PPE to healthcare workers. Justin Meyers, Sini’s Chief of Staff, is acting as a liaison to the county executive, as well as to hospitals working on expansion and coordinating the implementation of mobile testing sites and PPE Distribution.
Town of Brookhaven's Cedar Beach. Photo by Kyle Barr
As summer approaches, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone (D) is forming a working group to balance between public health precautions and summer recreational activities.
Bellone named Deputy County Executive Peter Scully as the chairman of a working group that will include town supervisors, village mayors in the east and west end of Suffolk and representatives from Fire Island.
The group will “work to develop guidelines and recommendations on reopening of municipal facilities,” Bellone said on his daily conference call with reporters. “We know it’s going to get more difficult as the summer approaches [amid] a strong desire to get back to a sense of normalcy.”
The county executive cautioned that Suffolk would not return to life as it was, as residents will live in a “different environment with different rules,” which will likely include the further deployment of face coverings, which can and have reduce the cost in terms of the number of lives lost to the disease.
“When you ask about whether you should continue those guidelines, think about how many people have died,” Bellone said. Indeed, that number climbed another 34 in the last day to 859.
The county, however, continues to share positive news, as the number of people entering hospitals with COVID-19 is lower than the number who are discharged, which reduces the strain on the health care system.
Another 90 people left hospitals and returned home over the last day. The number of people in the hospital fell by 30 to 1,411 people.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) announced today a regional group that will explore ways to reopen downstate New York. He also said New York would be working with surrounding states to plan reopening, with an emphasis not only on going back to the same place but improving on what came before.
“Let’s use this crisis, this situation, this time to actually learn the lessons … lets reimagine what we want society to be,” Cuomo said.
That downstate group will include representatives from Cuomo’s offices, Bellone’s offices, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D), Nassau County Executive Laura Curran (D) and Westchester County Executive George Latimer (D).
On the economic front, Bellone sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to gain acess to the municipal liquidity facility, which could provide property tax relief to residents in Suffolk County.
“We are very hopeful we will gain access” to the ability of the county to do short term borrowing that would allow the county to provide tax relief for residents, Bellone said.
The county distributed 16,000 pieces of personal protective equipment yesterday, which included N95 masks, ear loops masks, goggles, and isolation gowns. Today, the county is distributing some equipment to east end migrant farm workers, who are a “key part of our economy and we want to make sure we are helping them to reduce the spread of the virus,” Bellone said.
The county executive also highlighted Nature’s Bounty, which donated 1,000 N95 masks last week, which the county has given to first responders and health care workers.
Finally, Bellone said the county continued to monitor a storm that might hit the island with heavy rains and high winds. He said the county would be watching the weather closely through the day and might need to close the hotspot testing sites that opened in the last few weeks if the storm posed a threat to those efforts.
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