Recent heat waves have sent hundreds of people to emergency rooms around New York City, The City reported.
Since May 1, more than 425 New Yorkers have gone to the ER for heat-related illnesses, The City said Tuesday.
The statistics put the city on pace to match 2018, when extremely high temperatures and humidity sent more than 739 people to the hospital — the most during the last five summers.
The city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene reported a total of 64 people went to the ER on June 30, when the temperature reached 98 degrees, according to AccuWeather. That single-day number of patients was the third-highest in the last five years, The City said.
The heat index — what it feels like when the temperature is combined with humidity — on June 30 hit 103 degrees.
That day highlighted a four-day period (June 28-July 1) when Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a heat emergency. A total of 142 New Yorkers went to the emergency room with suspected heat-related maladies. No fatalities were reported among those patients.
New York ranks third, behind New Orleans and Newark, N.J., among the country’s most intense "urban heat islands" — a description for areas built to contain heat, spelling increasing dangers for some of the city’s most vulnerable residents.
The City said Big Apple emergency room doctors were on alert after temperatures reached 90 degrees for a second consecutive day Tuesday, and the city experiencing haze from wildfires out West.
"We open up our hospitals to receive patients or just for people to come in, [and] we issue community advisories," Dr. Rajesh Verma, chief of the emergency department at the city-run Kings County Hospital, told The City.
"When we know that we’re dealing with hot months, like July and August, we raise the awareness with our residents, staff and our physicians … and we just give them a little bit of a refresher."
COVID-19 caused New Yorkers to avoid emergency rooms in 2020, which may have affected the city’s count, according to a health department spokesperson.
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