Flushing Meadow’s Billie Jean King Tennis Center Will Become Field Hospital to Help Elmhurst Hospital

Mayor de Blasio announced this week that the Billie Jean King Tennis Center in Flushing-Corona Park (where the U.S. Open is held each year) will be converted into a temporary field hospital to help relieve the current need at Elmhurst Hospital.

It will hold up to 350 patients, treating COVID non-ICU patients, starting on this coming Tuesday, April 7.

“We’re approaching the toughest weeks of this crisis, and our City is rising to the challenge,” the Mayor said in a press release. “We are increasing hospital capacity at breakneck speed to ensure that every person in need of care will get it – no questions asked.”

As of 4:30pm on April 2, there are 49,707 total cases in NYC, with 16, 819 (about 34%) of them being in Queens. This is according to the NYC Health Department.

The city and state have starting converting many different facilities around the city into temporary field hospitals to help support overflow of patients, as projections show the hospitals will be overwhelmed with patients in the coming weeks. Other sites that have been or are being transformed are: the Javits Center in Manhattan, the New York Expo Center in the Bronx, the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, CUNY Staten Island and the Aqueduct Raceway, also in Queens in South Ozone Park. Each of these listed will hold up to 1,000 patients.