 My name is Commander Melinda Kendrake. My hometown is Springfield, Missouri, and I'm stationed here with Operational Hospital Support Unit, Camp Lejeune. I'm currently working at Wood Hole Hospital, which is in Brooklyn, in the Intents of Care Unit. I'm a family nurse practitioner. I work with a team of Navy providers, and we are working in the Intents of Care Unit, taking care of patients, and all of them are on ventilators. My hours are, I work 12-hour shifts, 3 days on and 3 days off. The hospital staff has been working non-stop for weeks. One example is a physician told us that in the last 6 weeks he got one day off, and because our team was there, that he was able to take 2 days off. Most of our patients are on ventilators. It's very exciting whenever we are able to extubate them. That means take them off the ventilator in yesterday. We had a gentleman who we were able to do that with and anticipate that he will recover and be discharged in the next couple of days. Working at the hospital, one of the things that I was really moved by is the support from the community. The restaurants and through donations, they provide free meals for the health care workers, and that was such a blessing to not have to worry about when you were going to eat again and just to see the support from the community for the health care workers. I wanted to explain what the role is that the military is playing in this COVID-19 crisis here in New York City. One of the things is we have the Navy hospital ship, the Comfort, but also we've turned Javits Center into a 2500 bed hospital. Also there's a large group of us, approximately 300 that are divided out amongst the 11 hospitals here in New York City to help give the health care workers some relief and allow them to get a break. Prior to coming to New York City when I was watching the news and seeing the devastation, the crisis that was going on due to the COVID-19 virus, I was heartbroken and saddened by the amount of sickness and deaths and seeing the health care workers who were working so hard. I was actually excited and relieved when I got the call from the military to come here and be able to help relieve some of the burden that the health care workers are under taking care of the patients. My goal is that we as the military can be here as long as it takes to help reopen New York City and save as many lives as we can. I would like to thank all my family and friends from Missouri who have reached out to me through social media and sending cards and packages and thank you so much for your support.