Jodi has edited this in Inception to see how it comes through to diesel.
She is not a UNC nurse but she’s from NC and drove up this past weekend to work in NYC. She has asked that we text her since she is not on a firm schedule yet and may not be able to answer the phone.
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ShellBie Townsend, 910-574-7720
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Hi Kara,
Yes, we can set that up! You can call us on skype at samaritans.purse at 11am, and we will have a spokesperson available. I will try to confirm the spokesperson for you at some point tomorrow.
Best,
Kaitlyn Lahm
SAMARITAN’S PURSE
Assistant Director, Marketing and Media Relations | COMMUNICATIONS
828-406-0365 | klahm@samaritan.org
SAMARITANSPURSE.ORG P.O. BOX 3000 | BOONE, NC 28607
nternational Christian Relief Organization Responds at the Epicenter of the Coronavirus in the U.S.
BOONE, N.C., March 28, 2020—Today, Samaritan’s Purse deployed its Emergency Field Hospital to New York City, New York, where the local medical infrastructure is severely overwhelmed. In cooperation with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), New York state officials, and local hospital authorities, Samaritan’s Purse will open a 68-bed field hospital, specially designed as a respiratory care unit. This response comes one week after Samaritan’s Purse opened an identical unit in Cremona, Italy—making it an unprecedented medical response for the N.C.-based organization as two Emergency Field Hospitals are run simultaneously.
An advance team arrived in New York on March 27 to begin assessments and site preparation. The Emergency Field Hospital is being trucked from North Carolina on four Samaritan’s Purse tractor-trailers. Once it arrives on-site, it will be built and operational in roughly 48 hours. This convoy’s arrival will be followed with doctors, nurses, lab technicians, water and sanitation experts, and other support staff.
“People are dying from the coronavirus, hospitals are out of beds, and the medical staff are overwhelmed,” said Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse. “We are deploying our Emergency Field Hospital to New York to help carry this burden. This is what Samaritan’s Purse does—we respond in the middle of crises to help people in Jesus’ Name. Please pray for our teams and for everyone around the world affected by the virus.”
The United States now has the largest outbreak of COVID-19 with nearly half of these cases in New York state. Thousands of new cases are reported each day.
Media Opportunities
Interview Edward Graham, assistant to the vice president of programs and government relations
Interview Dr. Elliott Tenpenny, team lead of the COVID-19 response, on the ground in New York
Interview Brock Kreitzburg, managing the response from the organization’s international headquarters
Interview medical personnel working at the Emergency Field Hospital
Broadcast Quality Broll and High-res photos of the U.S. response available here
Broadcast Quality Broll and High-res photos of the Italy response available here
Media Requests: Fill Out This Form
As Samaritan’s Purse helps bring critical surge capacity to New York, another team of medical personnel are running an Emergency Field Hosptial in Cremona, Italy. Less than 24 hours after opening this hospital, the Intensive Care Unit was full. As soon as hospital beds are open, they are immediately filled with patients suffering from the virus.
Samaritan’s Purse infectious disease experts have been working in coordination with the World Health Organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to ensure the team is taking necessary precautions both in the U.S. and in Italy.