MSU coach joins the front lines against coronavirus

WICHITA FALLS, Texas (TNN) - When Alex Charlton took the graduate assistant football job at Midwestern State, he expected to spend March and April on the field for spring ball.

But instead, he has gone from the sidelines to the front lines.

“Federal government is also deploying approximately 1,000 personnel to New York, that’s doctors, that’s nurses, it’s respiratory technicians," New York governor Andrew Cuomo said.

And Charlton was one of many nurses who answered the call.

“This is it, let’s go, " Charlton said. "Let’s just do what I can to help. I’m a small part of what so many people are doing.”

When he arrived in the ’city that never sleeps’, it was an experience he thought he would never witness and one he won’t soon forget.

“I mean there is nobody on the streets," Charlton said. "There’s nobody in the subways, busses are empty. Obviously everything is closed down, you would expect all that, but it’s just so different.”

He is now at Mount Sinai hospital in the middle of Manhattan, the epicenter of the New York hotspot. And though he is treating more than just COVID-19 patients, he says one thing is noticeably different.

“You treat everybody as if they have coronavirus because you just don’t know," Charlton said.

After seeing it firsthand, he says he understands even more why staying home is necessary.

“They make a big deal of the social distancing is they just don’t want a huge influx," Charlton said. "If everybody in America runs to the hospitals, there’s going to be a line through the next county and probably further at every hospital and bad outcomes will happen.”

Charlton says he is scheduled to stay in New York till May 30th but will stay longer if they need him and will continue his football work from the big apple, while looking forward to the day he can get back on the field with his fellow Mustangs.

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