New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that hospitals in some counties in the state will be allowed to resume elective surgeries.
Some hospitals in rural parts of New York have been forced to lay off staff after elective surgeries were banned during the coronavirus pandemic because there have been few cases of COVID-19 virus bringing in patients in those areas. Cuomo said Tuesday that allowing elective surgeries to continue could usher more business to these hospitals.
“You have many hospitals that are very quiet. Some hospitals are actually laying off people, believe it or not, in the middle of this, because they have no patients. We are going to — we artificially stopped the number of patients going into a hospital because we ended what’s called elective surgery, elective treatment. And therefore, people can’t go into the hospital for an elective procedure,” the Democratic governor explained.
He continued, “In those parts of the state and in those hospitals where the hospitals are laying off people because they’re so quiet and they have that capacity and capacity for the virus is not an issue, we’re going to allow elective outpatient treatment.”
Cuomo said the decision will be made on a county-by-county basis, as some rural areas are dealing with small coronavirus outbreaks that are not quite ready to reopen facilities to elective treatments.
