Former NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill returns to city service as NYC’s coronavirus senior advisor

Controversial former NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill is returning to city service as the newly-appointed COVID-19 Senior Advisor, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Wednesday.

Speaking at the daily coronavirus briefing, de Blasio introduced O’Neill as his ‘senior advisor helping us wage this battle against coronavirus’ and said the former cop would be tasked with making sure the city’s hospitals and medical professionals have the supplies they need to tackle the growing pandemic. 

His responsibilities will include working with City Hall and other agencies to maintain a strong chain of supplies and healthcare workers to hospitals. 

‘Jimmy is one of the finest public servants our City has ever known,’ said de Blasio.

Controversial former NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill is returning to city service as the newly-appointed COVID-19 Senior Advisor, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Wednesday

‘Jimmy will leverage his extensive management experience and knowledge of the City to ensure that our healthcare workers on the front lines have the supplies they need to save New Yorkers lives.

‘I’ve asked Jimmy O’Neill to develop a system for ensuring that we’ll have personnel in every hospital where they are needed, to make sure that this supply chain is seamless and constant and focused. That the supply usage is just the way it should be and any hospital that needs additional help, we’ll be able to get it to them quickly,’ de Blasio said.  

O’Neill held the top job in the NYPD for three years from September 2016, stepping down in 2019 to head to a job in the private sector at Visa.

The former police chief said he felt ‘compelled’ to leave his new job to return to government work during the crisis. 

‘It’s the responsibility of New Yorkers to do their part. I’ve always felt that way and I continue to feel that way,’ he said. ‘It’s important that we all come together as New Yorkers.’

‘How could you not help this great city?’ he said. 

De Blasio thanked Visa for freeing up O’Neill’s schedule to come on board.

Speaking at the daily coronavirus briefing, de Blasio introduced O’Neill and said he would be tasked with making sure the city’s hospitals and medical professionals have the supplies needed to tackle the growing pandemic

‘Jimmy’s coming to aid us because of the willingness of his company Visa and particularly its CEO Al Kelly,’ said de Blasio. 

‘It’s going to be truly life saving.’

O’Neill’s exit from the NYPD was plagued in controversy, coming just months after he finally bowed to pressure from activisits and fired Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo for the 2014 death of Eric Garner after he was held in a chokehold by the cop.

The move to fire Pantaleo led to a backlash from police officers, with unions calling for his resignation.  

De Blasio warned New Yorkers Wednesday that the ‘toughest weeks are ahead’  and again hammered home the date of April 5 as ‘D-Day’ for the city.

Sunday has been touted as the day the city will run out of essential medical supplies as it currently stands. 

‘April 5 is a crucial, crucial date for New York City,’ he said in the press conference.

‘As we prepare for a real upsurge, as I go into the specific numbers, I want to emphasize how much effort has already been expended. it’s unbelievable. How many people have gathered together to provide support already. The toughest weeks are ahead.’  

The mayor praised the support from people across the city who have come out in force to help ramp up medical supplies but said more is needed.

‘So many people are participating in getting the supplies where they need them. This is going to be an ongoing effort – nothing we’ve ever seen in the history of this city,’ he said. 

‘I want to thank all of them. Since I put April 5 as that D-Day by which we have to get ready.’  

New York City needs 3.3million N95 masks, 2.1million surgical masks, 100,000 isolation gowns and 400 ventilators by Sunday, de Blasio said.  

At least 2,500 more ventilators are needed for the healthcare system to cope with the expected surge in cases next week. 

‘We have to make sure it happens in time. Those are all very, very important,’ de Blasio said. 

A temporary hospital is built in Central Park on the East Meadow lawn during the Coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday in New York City. The facility is a partnership between Mt. Sinai Hospital and Christian humanitarian aid organization Samaritans Purse, equipped with 68 beds

A temporary hospital is built in Central Park on the East Meadow lawn during the Coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday in New York City. The facility is a partnership between Mt. Sinai Hospital and Christian humanitarian aid organization Samaritans Purse, equipped with 68 beds

Medical workers bring a patient to the International Christian relief organization Samaritans Purse Emergency Field Hospital in Central Park across from Mt. Sinai Hospital on Tuesday

Medical workers bring a patient to the International Christian relief organization Samaritans Purse Emergency Field Hospital in Central Park across from Mt. Sinai Hospital on Tuesday

‘But the area I focus on all the time is ventilators. They keep people alive. We have continued to get a very substantial supply but we need 400 more to be in place by Sunday to prepare us for the week ahead.

‘In the course of next week, we will need a minimum of 2,500 to 3,000 more ventilators. Extraordinary efforts are underway. 

‘Many personnel are needed but a lot of personnel are coming our way quickly. Here is the overall situation – we’re always going to need more of that supply chain I talked about. Every single week.’

Healthcare workers will all be given free testing at New York City’s public hospitals.

‘We’re starting to get more testing capacity. Finally, we’re starting to get a lot more testing capacity – we can use it in a different strategic way,’ de Blasio said. 

New York is ramping up the number of hospital beds by:

  • The Javits Center field hospital now – 2,900 beds
  • The Samaritans Purse Emergency Field Hospital in Central Park – 65 beds 
  • USNS Confort – 750 beds 
  • Roosevelt Island – 240 beds
  • US Open grounds – 350 beds 
  • Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, Redhook – 750 beds (will be ready mid-April)
  • 20 hotels across New York – 10,000 beds  
New York City's Health Department has released a detailed map of the city's coronavirus cases, broken down by zip code, as of March 31

New York City’s Health Department has released a detailed map of the city’s coronavirus cases, broken down by zip code, as of March 31

‘The hotel industry is capable of providing us – we so far have secured 10,000 beds in 20 hotels,’ de Blasio said.

‘It’s going to be furious and intense.’ 

New York’s public hospitals chief Dr. Mitchell Katz said the city expects more hotels to also offer their facilities to be used as makeshift hospitals.

‘The hotel industry is suffering and there are large numbers of empty rooms so we can quickly get contracts,’ he said at the technical briefing after de Blasio’s press conference.

The hotels will be used for patients who do not need to be intubated or who are recovering or mild cases but are not well enough to go home or cannot return home in case they infect others, Katz said.  

‘They will require modifications to create nurses stations,’ he said, but added that this only takes a ‘few days’. 

Madison Square Gardens has also ‘come up’ as another possible facility. 

Katz warned that the biggest challenge is that there are not enough medical staff to tackle the pandemic in city, which has fast become the epicenter for the virus.

‘What is challenging is the staffing,’ Katz warned 

‘There are only so many nurses in New York City and there is a huge need. And part of the success of this surge is going to be through recruiting through every means possible – nurses, physicians… healthcare personnel from other parts of the country.

‘It’s not as if there are a large number of nurses sitting around in New York City waiting to be called into action.’ 

Katz also addressed the mounting pressure on hospital morgues as the death toll has soared over the last few days. 

Refrigerated lorries have been positioned outside the city’s hospitals after hospital morgues have reached capacity.

New York's public hospitals chief Dr. Mitchell Katz said NYC's biggest challenge is that there are not enough medical staff to tackle the pandemic

New York’s public hospitals chief Dr. Mitchell Katz said NYC’s biggest challenge is that there are not enough medical staff to tackle the pandemic

‘Hospital morgues are  typically very small as we’re not normally besieged by horrible deaths as has occurred with this particular illness,’ he admitted.  

‘Hospitals are experiencing death rates that are much higher than they would have.’

Bodies are also being left in the makeshift morgues for far longer than normal, he said, as the high death toll, shock deaths among usually healthy individuals and the city’s lockdown measures have left funeral homes struggling to keep up. 

‘It’s much more difficult for funeral homes to retrieve people who are deceased because of the various parts of our shelter in place,’ he said.

The ‘average wait time’ for hospitals to pick up bodies is one to two days, Katz said.

‘In these circumstances we’re waiting multiple, multiple days.’

The hospitals chief did say he was ‘hopeful’ that New York could get the supplies it needs before reaching its predicted peak of the pandemic in May.

‘We’re not going to be allowed to run out [of ventilators],’ he said. ‘I remain hopeful of that.’ 

When asked about the death rate among confirmed cases in New York, Katz said he did not have the figures.

Healthcare workers help a patient who was fainted as she walked out of the Brooklyn Hospital Center in New York on April 1

Healthcare workers help a patient who was fainted as she walked out of the Brooklyn Hospital Center in New York on April 1

Medical workers handle a patient at Mount Sinai Hospital amid the coronavirus pandemic

Medical workers handle a patient at Mount Sinai Hospital amid the coronavirus pandemic

However he gave a somber statistic on the survival rate of people who need to be put on ventilators.

’80 to 85 percent of my cases on ventilators are not going to survive,’ he said. 

The coronavirus outbreak continues to claim more lives with the state’s death toll reaching 2,219 as of early Tuesday morning.

The number of infections in New York State also reached a staggering 84,025.

In New York City alone, there are 47,439 confirmed cases and 1,374 have died in the two months since the outbreak first hit US soil, as of the early hours of Thursday.  

Boroughs outside of Manhattan have been hardest hit, according to a New York City Health Department map which breaks down the city’s coronavirus cases by zip code up until March 31.

Elmhurst and Kew Gardens Hills in Queens, the South Bronx, and East New York in Brooklyn have the most cases of the areas across the city. 

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk