NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — A New York Assembly member from the Bronx is putting her scrubs back on to fight coronavirus.
Karines Reyes left her job as a nurse at Montefiore Medical Center back in January 2019, but has returned to her old line of work after receiving calls from her former coworkers.
"They say to me, 'Are you coming back, because everyone's dropping like flies. People are sick,'" the 36-year-old said. "It seems like everybody's getting sick. We look at each other on the floor and it's like, 'Well, it's only a matter of time before we all have it,' or we all feel like we already had it."
Reyes heeded the call and went back to her nursing job on March 28. She says it has been an eye opening experience.
Reyes tells WCBS 880's Peter Haskell that she was used to one or two emergency calls a day within the hospital, but now amid the COVID-19 pandemic, those calls are in the double digits.
During her 12-hour shift, her mask and gown never come off.
"It is hot, you sweat under it, it's difficult to breathe, it's difficult to catch your breath," Reyes said.
Even while working as a nurse, Reyes managed to get back to Albany last week to vote on the state budget.
New York City has reported a total of 93,414 coronavirus cases and the Bronx is one of the hardest hit boroughs with 20,265 positive cases.
Temporary field hospitals have been set up throughout the city to help ease the pressure on the city's already strained health care system, but Reyes says Montefiore is still over capacity even as officials say the numbers are starting to flatten.
"The fact that we have less admissions, doesn't mean that the hospital is any less populated or any less at capacity, we have been way beyond capacity," Reyes said.
In an interview with WCBS 880 on Thursday, Bronx City Councilman Ritchie Torres said the hospitals in the Bronx are dangerously overwhelmed.
"The data is crystal clear that COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on communities of color so we know where the need is but it's unclear where the resources are," Torres said. "We need more health care capacity in the Bronx, we are dangerously overburdened and underresourced... We know that poverty predisposes people to the worst affects of COVID-19 and we should concentrating the most resources in the lowest income communities."
Several Bronx officials have called on the governor to bring in more resources and open another facility in the borough to house more beds.