Two weeks ago, Ben Cirella pulled his silver Volvo up to the entrance of Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, N.Y. Elmhurst has been at the epicenter of New York City’s disastrous COVID-19 outbreak.

Queens has 56,719 confirmed cases of coronavirus, the most of any city borough, and has recorded nearly 6,000 deaths. After being overrun by a ballooning number of cases and facing ill-timed equipment shortages, the hospital was forced to expand its Intensive Care Unit capacity by 500 percent back in April.