Excitement and anxiety on eve of New York City reopening

Governor Andrew Cuomo says state’s restart critical, but urges New Yorkers to keep taking proper COVID precautions.

Brooklyn, New York, US – Bahar Bybordi remembers hearing a “code blue” every 10 to 15 minutes or so; it was the early days of the coronavirus pandemic at The Brooklyn Hospital Center – and that intercom message meant someone was dying or needed to be resuscitated. The frequent wailing of family members of the deceased would be so loud that Bybordi, on her breaks, would lock the door to her office and turn up the music to drown out the cries. “I have friends, attending physicians, who got intubated,” the physician told Al Jazeera. “There were seven or eight hospital employees who died last year: patient transport, clerks and a chef.”