Six Months In
Inside a New York City ER: Then and Now
This story is part of Six Months In, a special weeklong Elemental series reflecting on where we’ve been, what we’ve learned, and what the future holds for the Covid-19 pandemic.
Around six months ago, New York City was seeing its highest caseload of Covid-19 cases yet. Emergency rooms in the city were packed. There was a shortage of personal protective equipment for physicians, not to mention the fear of running out of ventilators for patients with cases so severe that they required supplemental oxygen. But, about half a year out, things in New York City are slowly making a change.
Craig Spencer, MD, is the director of global health in emergency medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. Before the coronavirus hit, he spent between three and six months each year helping with humanitarian crises around the world. But since February, he’s been grounded in New York City, working three days a week at the hospital’s emergency department; each shift about 12 hours long.
During the thick of the coronavirus spread in New York City, Spencer tweeted about how his days in the emergency room were spent tending one…
