The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Army Corps eyes convention center, casino for overflow sites
Faced with the ominous possibility that Connecticut hospitals soon won’t be able to handle a continued surge of coronavirus patients, the governor and healthcare executives revealed a broad plan Monday to use colleges, casinos, arenas and other venues to help treat the state’s sick.
Among the drastic actions also being considered, authorities said, was to isolate nursing home patients who test positive for COVID-19
in separate facilities, including some that would have to be re-opened. The state has at least 20 nursing homes with at least one coronavirus case, authorities said Monday, and an assisted living facility in Ridgefield has been connected to six deaths.
Federal agencies are working in Connecticut to expand hospital overflow space including a 250-bed emergency facility at Southern Connecticut State University.
The Connecticut National Guard, which had already set up field hospitals in Danbury and Hartford, will begin converting SCSU’s Moore Field House on Tuesday. David Pytlik, the guard’s public affairs officer, said soldiers will unpack and install medical equipment, which is arriving from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The National Guard is also working on converting Webster Bank Arena in Bridgeport and Western Connecticut State University in Danbury into minimumcare hospital facilities.
Separately, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is in Connecticut scouting out two major locations for health facilities expansion: the Mohegan Sun resort and the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford.
“Right now we’re looking for patients,” Lamont said Monday afternoon. “We’re looking for beds.” He noted that in downtown Hartford, doctors and nurses tending patients in the convention center on the riverfront could stay
and dine in nearby hotels.
The state is planning for a mid-April peak of the need for hospital beds, depending on the success that social distancing may have on the spread of the virus.
“Look if we’re crowded in the south, maybe we’ve got some capacity in the northern part of the state, and it could be just the opposite in three or four weeks,” Lamont said.
One of the sites planned for an patient-overflow location is the Tully Health Center in Stamford, a medical office, gym and general purpose building operated
by Stamford Health. The idea would be to open beds at Tully for discharged patients who need infectionfree places to stay during the crisis.
Overall, there are about 9,000 hospital beds in the state’s 27 acute-care hospitals.
“As part of our ongoing capacity planning efforts related to COVID-19,” Stamford Health said in a written release after Lamont announced the location, “we are working with state authorities regarding relocating and consolidating services, and we will communicate with our patients and the community as our plans solidify.”
The developments came on a day when another 578 people tested positive for the COVID-19 virus, bringing
the total to 2,571, a 29-percent jump from Sunday as the infection spreads more into New Haven County, Lamont said. The Department of Public Health reported two more deaths statewide, bringing the total to 36.
Meanwhile, at the White House, United Technologies Corp. CEO Gregory J. Hayes announced Monday night that the company is producing personal protective equipment, including face shields, and working with the U.S. Air Force to evacuate people sick with coronavirus from certain areas.
“We stand ready to help in any way we can,” Hayes said, standing next to President Donald Trump in the historic Rose Garden. “We don’t need the Defense Production Act to ask us to act.”
Trump has been under criticism for not using the act to force companies to assist in the manufacture of equipment as the coronavirus spreads.
Last week, Farmingtonbased UTC donated about 90,000 pieces of personal protective equipment (PPE) to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Next week, the company will have nearly a million more pieces to donate. The company started production of face shields on Monday and will have 10,000 ready in the next month, said Hayes, who appeared at the White House with the CEOs of Proctor and Gamble, Honeywell, Jockey and My Pillow Inc, which are helping produce medical supplies.