20 nurses and doctors from the University of California, San Francisco are headed to New York City where help is much-needed at the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. The healthcare workers will be caring for COVID-19 patients in the New York-Presbyterian hospital system.
Of the over 200 healthcare workers who volunteered for the assignment, UCSF has selected 12 doctors and 8 nurses to go. As of Saturday morning, New York state has seen over 180,000 cases of the virus total, with deaths nearing 9,000. Meanwhile. San Francisco has around 90 hospitalizations from the virus.
Josh Adler, chief clinical officer of UCSF health, said in a statement, "We remain focused on our patients here in San Francisco, and are very well resourced with health care workers should we face a surge ourselves, even with our volunteers in New York. But our present capacity allows us to extend our public health mission to those who are facing some of the country's most challenging conditions during this pandemic."
The group of 20 healthcare workers were set to travel to NYC on Saturday and stay for one month, ABC7 News reports.