-Hi, my name is Matthew Bai.
I'm an attending physician at the Mount Sinai Queens Hospital
in the emergency department.
I'm about to start my shift.
It's just before 7:00 in the morning right now.
Last night, before I went to bed,
we had over 60 patients waiting for a hospital bed
in our emergency department with COVID-19.
So I don't know what this morning is gonna be like,
but it's probably not gonna be that much
different than last night,
meaning it's gonna be a busy day.
It's been tough.
To make things tougher, this morning,
actually over the weekend, my wife and I decided
that it would be safer for our family,
for our 17-month-old daughter and my wife,
to leave our apartment until this is over,
since I'm in and out of this high-risk environment every day.
I don't know how long it's gonna be,
but this morning when I left the house,
I said goodbye to my wife and my daughter for who knows how long.
It's gonna be several weeks, probably,
before I see them in person again.
So, I'm about to go in and pick up
my personal protective equipment for the day and start my shift.
We'll see how it goes today.
I'm getting ready to put on my personal protective equipment
for the day.
This right here is my N95 mask
that I will be wearing for the whole day throughout my shift.
It's a little hard to breathe, but it stays on the whole day
to protect us from any airborne particles.
And then this is a second mask, just surgical mask,
that goes over the N95 to protect it from any splashes
or droplets or secretions that may come my way.
And lastly are these.
It's one form of eye protection
to protect your eyes from splashes.
This is what I'll be wearing generally throughout the day
if I need to go into a high-risk procedure,
like intubating a patient,
meaning putting the patient on a ventilator.
We have full-face masks that cover the entire area
and all your equipment.
And then after you're done with the procedure, that comes off
and we wipe that down with disinfectant for the next use.
This is our ED.
You can see all the rooms are filled.
Usually, these halls are very neat and empty.
And now you can see,
there's patients everywhere because of this.
Makes it very hard to work.
And we're trying our best to treat everyone that we can.
All these patients here.
Even though we're overflowing, we're trying our best
to still provide them care, which we are doing.
The patients have oxygen tanks, if they need.
I just finished my shift.
I was actually supposed to finish at 5:00,
but there were a lot of things to do and patients
to take care of.
So it's 7:00 now, and I'm finishing.
I just took off my PP.
I don't know if you can see the marks
from wearing my PP all day,
and my nose is a little red from the mask.
But that's what we're doing to protect ourselves.
It's been a tough day.
The ED has been really full, and everyone's trying their best
to give everyone the treatment that they need.
I mean, I'm tired.
I'm gonna go home, and I'm gonna try to sleep,
and then we'll be back tomorrow.
I want to say that, I mean,
the things that I see in the ER are scary.
I'm a little scared myself.
But it's good to see all these people coming in from all over,
from other services in the hospital,
from other areas in the nation stepping in to help out.
We had a couple providers that just started today
that flew in from --
one of them flew in from Wisconsin.
And another one flew in from, I think,
somewhere in the Midwest
to help us staff this crisis in New York.
So, it's not gonna be easy.
I mean, it's gonna be really tough,
and it's only gonna get tougher over the next two weeks.
But we'll get through this as best as we can,
and we'll try to use the resources
that we have as best
as we can to help as many people as we can.