Flooded with patients who need critical care, Elmhurst Hospital is now an epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic.

To free up capacity, the hospital has started transferring patients to other facilities.

At least 29 of them have gone to Veterans Affairs hospitals, in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan.

“When we saw what was going on around us, we said we need to step up to the plate,” said Martina Parauda, Director of Veterans Administration.

The VA New York Harbor Health Care system serves about 48,000 veterans a year, in three hospitals and two clinics across the city.

Last week, the VA began accepting patients who are not veterans, adding 15 intensive care beds and 35 other medical beds for them, all to ease the burden on the city's other hospitals. The VA says it can be flexible to do more as needed.

“We now have the capability and the footprint of bed capacity to treat more than what we had been doing in the past,” said Dr. Patrick Malloy, Veterans Administration.

The VA is an expansive national network and has already tapped into resources to make sure its equipment needs are met.

Doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists have been recruited from Boston and upstate New York to help out here in the city.

Congressman Max Rose says the VA playing a part is integral to the country's fight against the pandemic.

"New York City is the epicenter of this country throughout the country. That may not be the case several months from now. Several months from now it may be somewhere else. So, what we are doing is we are building a model for how the nation can focus its resources to staff PPE equipment on the epicenter of this crisis and then transition once that is no longer the case. But the VA Has to play a role in that regard,” said congressman Max Rose.

As for the veterans who rely on the VA for regular medical services, the VA system is having more veterans consult with their doctors through video links or phone calls. The VA says its veterans have gotten the message that the services are still there for them, just in a different way than they're used to.