Governors and mayors across the nation are opting to scale back the Army Corps of Engineers’s alternative hospital projects, while others are extending leases in anticipation of a fall spike in the coronavirus infection rate, said the Corps’s Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite at a Friday Pentagon briefing.
On Day 35 of the COVID-19 emergency response and fresh from Denver, Colorado, and a White House meeting, Semonite removed a face mask to update Pentagon reporters on 28 projects underway to expand bed capacity by 15,800 across several states.
“What we’re seeing is the curve is elongated,” he said. “We’ve got to really kind of figure out: How long is this with us, and at what point do you downscale?”
The Corps had been working around the clock to meet urgent hospital bed needs in some cities that have now been scaled back or whose deadlines are being pushed further out.
“We thought this would be a much steeper spike and straight down. So we didn’t think we would have as much time,” he admitted, describing how he takes his orders from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and local authorities. “We are bringing some of the numbers down.”
In recent days, the Javits Center in New York City, built with a capacity to handle in excess of 2,500 COVID-19 patients, is seeing roughly 300 patients. Army field hospitals in Seattle were disassembled recently without seeing a single patient.
In some cases, Semonite said he is noticing longer leases are being signed in order to give mayors the flexibility for a spike in infections later in the year.
“At the end of the day, it’s a relatively small cost to have the capability to keep people alive,” he said. “That’s probably not a bad investment to kind of put it in a mothball status through the summer.”
Due to national disaster declarations across the country, the federal government is picking up the tab for 75% of the cost associated with the build-outs, with local governments responsible for the remaining share.
In recent days, the Corps’s commanding general said he has also visited New York, Detroit, Chicago, and Miami, and next week, he plans to be in New Jersey.
Differences in need vary in urban and rural areas, with some cities at the peak of their infections right now, while his teams on the island regions of Hawaii, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are planning for peak infections as far out as June.
Meanwhile, the Corps is continuing to work on precoronavirus projects, where possible, including repairing levees to prevent a flood of the Mississippi River and $8 billion in hospital projects for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Semonite declined to answer a specific question as to whether the construction of the southern border wall was continuing.
Despite the perceived respite in surge hospital bed need, the Corps assessed an additional 100 facilities for possible build-outs over the last 10 days, bringing the nationwide assessment tally to over 1,000.
As the Corps continues to refine and learn best practices, Semonite described how piping in oxygen has become standard procedure.
At the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, the Corps brought in 6 miles of copper pipe as part of an estimated $35 million build-out. Standard build-outs also include additional lighting, sinks, showers, Wi-Fi, and pharmacies, depending on local demands.
