Stony Brook Hospital Expands Staff and Capacity – East Hampton Star

Dr. Bettina Fries, right, a professor of medicine and the chief of the division of infectious diseases, and Agjah Libohova with a new face shield they developed for treating Covid-19 patients.

Stony Brook University Hospital will soon increase both the number of its health care providers and its hospital capacity, it was announced this week.

Representative Lee Zeldin's office said on Monday that the Army Corps of Engineers has paid a construction company $50 million to expand the hospital space by building climate-controlled tents on its campus. The project, which will add 1,038 beds to Stony Brook's capacity, is expected to be completed by April 18.

Stony Brook Medicine, which oversees all of Stony Brook University Medicine's educational and hospital functions, announced several initiatives and research activities this week related to the Covid-19 pandemic. These include clinical trials of treatments for the illness, the design and manufacture of a new face shield for medical workers, and the early graduation of senior medical students who have met the requirements in April.

The students will be rolled into Stony Brook University Hospital's staff under the supervision of residents, fellows, and attending physicians. The graduates will begin their residencies on July 1.

The university has developed the face shields through the efforts of Dr. Bettina Fries, a professor of medicine, molecular genetics, and microbiology and the chief of the division of infectious diseases, and Agjah Libohova, a neighbor of Dr. Fries who is a research and development specialist at Clear-Vu Lighting, a Long Island manufacturing company.

The company will mass-produce a shield using a prototype of one that Dr. Fries wears, starting with an order of 20,000 with plans to scale up to 40,000 a day for a total of 1.2 million per month. The shields will be available to caregivers at all of Stony Brook's affiliate hospitals.

In addition, the hospital is conducting its own research and trials into several initiatives now being looked at nationally. These include the sharing of ventilators between patients, trials of Remdesivir and Sarilumab, and harvesting and sharing plasma from those who have recovered from Covid-19. Remdesivir is a drug developed to treat the Ebola and Marburg viruses, and Sarilumab is a human antibody.

The university is also part of a national effort in which caregivers wear a device to collect physiological data that could help detect and predict the onset of the virus that causes Covid-19 in high-risk medical facilities.

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Stony Brook Hospital Expands Staff and Capacity - East Hampton Star