In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit New York City. The Mount Sinai System had to adapt quickly as cases mounted and ICU beds rapidly filled up. It was a collaborative effort from everyone to address the crisis: from front-line staff treating patients, to scientists and researchers working tirelessly behind the scenes to understand the virus. Five years after the pandemic was declared official, Mount Sinai staff are coming together to reflect on what it took to overcome one of the greatest health challenges faced by the city. The lessons learned will undoubtedly help us be prepared to address any threats in the future.
David L. Reich, MD Umesh Gidwani, MD Sanam Ahmed, MD
Zevy Hamburger, MD Joseph Herrera, DO Erik Blutinger, MD Golda Boahene, MSN, RN
America will soon be facing a coronavirus emergency at home or nationwide lockdown. There are lots of patients who are intubated and on a breathing machine who's uh really course is yet to be determined. I heard that our volume is just exploding. The effect that this has had on our healthcare workers is um. It's devastating March 2020 New York City. We stood at the edge of the worst health care crisis in modern memory, and no one knew. Over the next eight weeks, over 18,000 New Yorkers would die of COVID-19, 1 every 5 minutes, over 350 every day. Here at the Mount Sinai Health System we received the very first COVID-19 patient in New York City, and we responded with agility, speed, and compassion. During those first weeks, we treated over 7000 patients. We created hundreds of additional beds in our lobbies and even Central Park. We were in the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many hospitals could not fathom the sheer volume of patients. Our cardiac ICU was transformed into a COVID ICU 2 patients per room, lungs not working, kidneys not working, brain not working, many of them on ventilators. It was hectic. It was chaotic. It was just nonstop. COVID brought more death than any of us are used to seeing over the course of an entire career, let alone over the course of just a couple of weeks. It was an epic struggle, and as we look back 5 years later, it is good to reflect on what we experienced, what we learned, and how we've moved forward. Everybody, you know, pulled up their bootstraps like we really worked hard every single day. I never thought of taking time off. I don't think any of us did. You have to do what you can do for your community. All you knew is that you're going to get through this. This is not the end of mankind. We will emerge on the other side. How that will look was impossible to predict. And while our frontline workers were working day and night, our best minds in research were tirelessly unraveling the mystery of how the virus worked and how to treat it. In early 2020, scientists, physicians, and engineers launched a web-based symptom tracker to understand the spread of the virus in New York City. Also, our Center for Clinical Laboratories received emergency authorization from the FDA for an antibody test to determine exposure to COVID-19. We recruited donors. Had recovered from COVID-19 and used the antibody rich plasma to treat patients. Even our doctors donated. If I could donate my plasma and they could give it to people in the early phases of their illness, then it may actually serve as a temporary immunity just to do something to try and help physically with other people's illnesses. It was a mystery why some patients recovered from COVID-19 quickly and why some experienced severe symptoms. In 2021, Mount Sinai researchers introduced a machine learning technique using electronic health records to predict the severity of COVID-19 symptoms. Testing was critical to prevent the spread of the virus. And so we launched the Mount Sinai COVID-19 PCR saliva testing program in New York. Time went on. We understood that long term COVID needed to be addressed and set up the first center for post-COVID care, and later in 2024, the Cohen Center for Recovery from Complex illnesses. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai also became the center for nationwide consortium studies funded by the NIH on the long-term effects of COVID-19. In 2022, Mount Sinai researchers developed a rapid blood assay that measured immunity to COVID-19, which helped inform re-vaccination strategies. Mount Sinai launched Castlevax, an R&D company to develop vaccines against current and potential future pandemic threats. Our researchers were one of the first to publish a study about changes in blood gene expression being linked. To long COVID. As we recognize the 5 year mark of the COVID-19 pandemic, we continue to use what we've learned to mitigate current and future health threats. We've really come a long way. It's the right time to look back at the 5 year mark and appreciate what we have and what we can do when we all work together. I hope we don't forget the sense of community, the love that was. Given from strangers to another stranger to get everybody through this. It's important to preserve that institutional memory. It's important to preserve that personal memory. So that we know what happened, learn from it, and be prepared for the future.
