Temporary Central Park Emergency Hospital Spark Mixed Emotions

An emergency field hospital located in the New York Central Park is set to open anytime soon. The 68-bed field hospital has been created to receive Covid-19 patients as many of the hospitals have been occupied already. This recent development, however, seems to attract a lot of mixed emotions. The group responsible for this is the Samaritan’s Purse, an evangelical Christian disaster relief organization made up of a team of 72 doctors, nurses and other health care workers. The temporary Central Park hospital has been equipped with 10 ventilators and other medical supplies.

“We don’t want to make mistakes. We want everything to be right. We don’t want to feel overwhelmed. We just want to make the city proud of us and itself. There are a lot of emotions,” the team leader, Tim Mosher said.

The emergency hospital is in partnership with New York’s Mount Sinai Health System, and would, therefore, transfer overflow coronavirus patients from the Brooklyn and Queens Mount Sinai branches.

Samaritan’s Purse, founded by Franklin Graham, is known for its stand against the LGBTQ movement. This was known after Graham made a few ant-LGBTQ statements in the past. As a result of this New York state senator, Brad Hoylman made a statement in relation to the ministry’s stand. Urging on Franklin Graham to “publicly assure LGBTQ New Yorkers that they will receive the same treatment as anyone else in the Central Park field hospital.” Adding that the group’s activities be closely monitored by the mayor.

City Council Speaker, Corey Johnson finds it rather “very disturbing” that the Samaritans Purse group could eventually spark up issues of discrimination by turning away patients over their sexual orientation.

In response to the recent development, he tweeted, “we need reassurances from the city and Mt. Sinai that Samaritan’s Purse and its volunteers will be monitored, and that the LGBTQ community will not be discriminated against in any way.” He further added, “This is a crisis but our values remain.”

In response to all of these, Mount Sinai has said that it would be overseeing the planning and set up of the field, and all treatment would be fully based on a medical basis rather than individual ideologies. Mount Sinai has released an official statement stating that its partnering with Samaritan’s Purse is a unified mission “to provide same world-class care to anyone and everyone who needs it, no questions asked.”

New York Rep., Carolyn Maloney, had this to say about the controversies: “We sent out a call for help, and they responded… they want to help us save lives, and we need their help.” Adding that she had a conversation with the Mount Sinai officials and they assured her that no one would get discriminated against.