“I basically got paid $2,000 a day to sit on my phone and look at Facebook,

New York City spent $52 million on coronavirus hospital that served 79 patients

A temporary field hospital set up by New York city officials costing at least $52 million treated fewer than 100 patients in total and sat unused even as nearby hospitals were overwhelmed with coronavirus patients, according to a report Tuesday by The New York Times.

The temporary hospital set up at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center treated just 79 patients in the month it was in operation, while staff reported being paid to do nothing all day amid the height of the city's coronavirus outbreak.

“I basically got paid $2,000 a day to sit on my phone and look at Facebook,” Katie Capano, a nurse practitioner from Baltimore who worked at the center, told the Times. “We all felt guilty. I felt really ashamed, to be honest.”

Workers at the Billie Jean King facility who spoke to the Times confirmed that they largely spent their time completing repetitive paperwork. LINK