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Department of Defense Military Medical Team leaves Buffalo

Three months ago, ECMC had 124 COVID patients and more than 200 workers who were out sick with COVID. As of Friday, there were only 14 COVID patients.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — The Department of Defense Military Medical Team is finally leaving Buffalo.

Three months ago, Erie County Medical Center had 124 COVID-19 patients and more than 200 workers who were out sick with COVID.

So Gov. Kathy Hochul advocated for the deployment of medical team members to ECMC to help them take care of patients.

On Friday, there were only 14 COVID patients there, meaning the Department of Defense Military Medical Team can finally go home. All medical team members were active duty members of the U.S. Navy.

Before they leave Western New York, the hospital had a sendoff for those service men and women. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz also showed up to tell the medical team members how impactful they were in saving lives. 

"ECMC is the only Level 1 trauma center for all of Western New York," he said. "It gets the worst patients, the ones that need critical care. If ECMC is in a situation where it cannot accept those patients, the entire hospital system in Western New York is in deep trouble."

He added: "Today we have 14 COVID patients. Only one of those patients came here because of COVID. The other patients came here for other reasons and have COVID. Hopefully we're on our way back to some sense of normalcy and again. You were a big part of getting us to this point."

The leader for the medical team said her team sacrificed a lot to help out here, but they are glad they did. 

Editor's note: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified the Department of Defense Military Medical Team as U.S. National Guard members and that Gov. Kathy Hochul had deployed the team.

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