'Very confident': NYC hospitals prepare for virus resurgence

NEW YORK (AP) — Like battle-hardened veterans, New York City hospitals and nursing homes are bracing for a potential resurgence of coronavirus patients, drawing on lessons learned in the spring when the outbreak brought the nation's largest city to its knees.

The new playbook derives from the apocalyptic days of March and April, when testing and resources were scarce, emergency rooms overflowed, and funeral homes stacked corpses in refrigerated trailers.

Those insights, however hard won, make it far less likely that the city's hospitals would collapse under a second wave of COVID-19, health care leaders said.

Even without a vaccine, doctors are touting increasingly effective coronavirus treatments, three-month supplies of personal protective equipment and contingency staffing plans.

Similar preparations are underway at New York’s hard hit nursing homes, which accounted for a staggering percentage of the state’s coronavirus deaths.

“We didn’t even have testing in February when there was so much transmission,” Dr. Mitchell Katz, head of the city’s public hospital system, said in an interview. “I can’t see how we’d ever have the same situation that we had in March and April, but we are preparing for that possibility anyway.”

Not only has critical care improved, Katz said, but coronavirus patients also are generally “not getting as intense as an exposure as they once did because of the wearing of masks.” New cases also are afflicting younger people, who are less likely than older patients to need hospitalization.

“Our hospitals are still quieter than they would have been a year ago because people are avoiding care out of concerns about COVID," Katz added. “We can have several hundred additional patients and still not be full.”

New York has...