National Guard troops have been deployed to assist a Health Department command post in New Rochelle, New York, a coronavirus hot spot just north of New York City.
The city has 108 of the state’s 178 confirmed cases, according to Governor Andrew Cuomo, making it the nation’s largest cluster of infected people with the Coronavirus.
Beginning on Thursday, the city will undergo a two week containment, shutting down public gathering facilities and schools. The containment area will take place in a one mile radius around where the first case was discovered two weeks ago. The guard units will assist with food deliveries to those quarantined to their homes. Nurses with protective gear are being sent to gather coronavirus samples and to check on those quarantined.
The nurses deployed in New Rochelle and across the state are being trained in how to use and discard special protective clothing and respirator masks they wear inside the residence of someone who is symptomatic. They are supposed to remove the clothing and wrap it in a bag that is left outside the residence — usually in an external trash can, according to guidelines being circulated among the nurses.
“This is an evolving situation,” state Health Department Commissioner Howard Zucker said. “We have moved from a containment strategy to more of a mitigation strategy. … We felt that a radius of a mile from that spot would be effective.”
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