250-bed field hospital for non-COVID-19 patients built at SCSU’s Moore Field House
NEW HAVEN — The state is converting public college and university facilities into emergency medical sites and lodging as officials expect an increased coronavirus-related burden on hospitals next month.
As part of that effort, the Federal Emergency Management Agency staged a 250bed medical station for noncoronavirus patients Tuesday in the Southern Connecticut State University Moore Field House, New Haven City Emergency Management Director Rick Fontana said.
Further, Leigh Appleby, a spokesman for the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system, said there is a projection and expectation that residence halls and other spaces at SCSU, Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, Central Connecticut State University in New Britain and Eastern Connecticut State University in Windham will be used to house emergency medical personnel and non-critical COVID-19 patients.
“CSCU is working closely with (the Division of Emergency Management and Homeland Security) and other state partners to assist with emergency response efforts,” Appleby said.
Stephanie Reitz, a spokeswoman for the University of Connecticut, said the university has emptied and cleaned the rooms inside student housing for its regional Stamford campus for state use.
“Although we do not definitively know who they will house in that building, we’re glad to be able to help in such an important effort and critical time,” Reitz said.
Initially, Bridgeport’s Webster Bank Arena was planned for a 128-bed facility this week, but the plan changed Tuesday as the state reallocated its resources to the public colleges and universities.
The field houses at SCSU and WCSU are being transformed into regional medical centers to house overflow patients from Yale New Haven Hospital and Danbury Hospital, respectively, Appleby said.
At the SCSU Moore Field House Tuesday, a team of about 25 from the Connecticut Air National Guard and Army broke down the gymnasium and loaded materials.
“At this point, the site is intended to treat non-COVID-19 patients so we can provide more space for those who need COVID-19-related care at the hospital,” Mayor Justin Elicker said.
It “is good news that the state is working hard to prepare for the likelihood that our medical system will need to cope with a significant surge in patients,” according to Elicker.
“We anticipate the state will utilize it pretty quickly,” said SCSU President Joe Bertolino. “It’s not just important for Southern, but for everyone. It’s all hands on deck.”
As more space was being made available for patients, Dr. Christian Pettker, associate chief quality officer for the Yale New Haven Health System and the Yale School of Medicine, said, “We’re really trying to project and plan six to eight weeks from now,” though the peak of the pandemic is expected to hit the New Haven area in the second or third week of April.
At that point, Pettker said, the number of patients will exceed the hospitals’ number of beds. On Tuesday, Pettker said, there were 180 COVID-19
patients at Yale New Haven Hospital and more than 350 in the five hospitals that include Bridgeport and Greenwich.
“We are definitely taking a system approach to this … and what’s clear to us is that the demand has been much higher in Fairfield County. … So we’re doing as much as we can to support Greenwich and Bridgeport,” Pettker said.
New Haven had 119 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of Tuesday.
Since the demand is expected to increase at Yale New Haven, few patients have been transferred from Fairfield County, Pettker said, except those who require procedures not performed at the other hospitals. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, performed by a machine that assists the lungs, is not done in Greenwich, for example, he said.
But an increase in deaths is inevitable, Pettker said. As of Tuesday afternoon, Gov.
Ned Lamont said 69 people had died in Connecticut of COVID-19.
At SCSU, Steven Tucker, a public affairs specialist for the Connecticut Air National Guard, said the materials to be used there were shipped by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
University officials said they had been in contact with the state and the governor’s office, and the Moore Field House was appealing for use as a health care site.
“The State Emergency Operations Center found it to be ideal because of its location and size,” said SCSU Executive Vice President Mark Rozewski.
Patients with non-coronavirus illnesses also will be housed at SCSU dorms, Fontana said.
Rozewski said about 2,500 beds are available in the university’s on-campus sites once they are ready on Friday.
He said custodians have been working to clean the dormitories. Students had a brief window to return and pack up their rooms, but a small number will have their belongings packed and shipped by the university.
“A few students just couldn’t get here in time,” he said. “Now we’re just sweeping up behind them.”
Patrick Dilger, director of integrated communications and marketing at SCSU, said National Guard trucks were to be used to drop off equipment for what was described to him as a “medical station.”
“We’re happy to help,” said Rozewski.
Elicker said in his statement that, “The City of New Haven is looking forward to supporting the State’s use of Southern as a medical surge site to help decompress the hospital and provide more beds for those in need of care related to COVID-19.”
Pettker said that, among the other sites being considered for overflow of nonCOVID-19 patients is the Lanman Center, a wing of Payne Whitney Gymnasium on Lake Place. “We’re working with some of our ambulatory surgical sites and some of our ambulatory sites” to take patients who are recovering after surgery or treatment for other conditions.
Pettker said OVID-19 patients will be kept together and the top three floors of the Smilow Cancer Hospital, which have capacity for negative pressure, will be used. Negative pressure rooms exhaust the air into the atmosphere rather than within the hospital. “We moved patients that were already on those floors to other sites in our hospital and freed up those rooms” for COVID-19 patients and those suspected of having the disease.
Because of the publicity about needing masks, gloves and other personal protective equipment, Pettker said, “We have had an amazing sense of volunteerism of people wanting to donate PPE.” Those who wish to make a donation can email donationsppe@ynhh.org.
In preparing for an expected surge in coronavirus infections, “We’ve been learning a lot from our colleagues in New York … and they’ve been very generous in sharing their experiences and knowledge, even though they’ve been working around the clock,” Pettker said.
“The deaths usually lag the hospitalizations by … two to three weeks,” Pettker said. “We’ve only seen hospitalizations for a couple of weeks and I anticipate growth in the death rate will start to rise because we’re in a surging hospitalization rate.
“We had about 15-16 hospitalizations on the 20th [of March] and now we’re 10 times that, and so if that lag in death rate is true, then we’ll start seeing deaths in much larger numbers in about two weeks.”