By NewsDesk  @infectiousdiseasenews

Today, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the State is launching an online portal that will help connect hospitals and healthcare facilities across the state with the nearly 80,000 healthcare workers who have volunteered to work on a temporary basis during the COVID-19 pandemic. The portal will prioritize the deployment of workers to hospitals with the greatest need; volunteers are expected to be deployed as early as this Thursday.

He also said a new hospital network Central Coordinating Team that will help facilitate a more coordinated and strategic approach among the state’s healthcare system in combating the COVID-19 pandemic.

The coordinating team will help implement the statewide public-private hospital plan to share information, supplies, staff and patients among hospitals across the State. The team will be responsible for organizing upstate to downstate staffing; assisting Elmhurst Hospital and other stressed hospitals; setting patient thresholds for hospitals; organizing patient transfers to other hospitals and the USNS Comfort; coordinating State-City stockpiles and individual hospital stockpiles; and facilitating staffing recruitment.

New York officials confirmed 9,298 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 75,795 confirmed cases, of which more than 43,000 are reported in New York City.