Following the lead of cities such as Chicago and New York, more local leaders are asking the Army Corps of Engineers to build out spaces to host coronavirus patients as Corps engineers innovate quickly to beat an expected mid-April infections peak.
“This is evolving,” said U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lt. Gen. Todd T. Semonite of requests by governors and mayors who are changing their needs for surplus beds to host COVID-19 patients. “In the last 24 hours, just with Javits alone, we have seen a scenario where some of these eventually change.”
In New York City’s Javits Center, a space originally conceived to host 2,000 non-COVID-19 patients, is being adapted to meet the negative pressure requirements to host coronavirus patients safely.
Semonite said trips this week to New York City, Chicago, and Detroit led him to believe that the coming delta, or shortage, of beds in hot-spot cities will be for coronavirus patients, and his engineers have learned how to adapt quickly when demand signals change.
“This has got to be an agile plan,” he said at a Friday Pentagon briefing, discussing how the Corps is adding 9,820 beds to the three critical shortage cities he visited. “We’ve got to be smart enough to try to anticipate where it’s gonna come and to be able to have the appropriate amount of facilities there so that the site component is not the critical path.”
Semonite said sometimes it’s as easy as technicians making an adjustment in an HVAC room, as long as the right site was selected on the front-end.
On a daily basis, the Corps reevaluates viral growth data and bed shortages to alert city mayors who need to make the decision first. As of Friday, the Corps completed 549 alternate care facility site assessments of the 669 requested.
“We’re looking at bed shortages,” he said. “We can click on a state, and we can understand what are the bed requirements, what are the beds available, and have some degree of an understanding — and this is arrayed — when we think the max is going to be for a given city.”
“When we go in now, we’re trying to make sure that leaders understand that I think COVID is an option, certainly in the convention center model,” he said.
The Army Corps is already considering how field houses can also reach the negative pressure environments for air locks and suction necessary to safely house patients who have the coronavirus.
Semonite stressed that fundamental to the Corps building out in time to beat hospital surge demands is getting governors and mayors to make quick decisions.
“Here’s where I’m really concerned,” the general said. “If we know that the peak again is in three weeks, if we need 23 days to build a site, then we are already two days too late.”
Semonite referenced the McCormick Place convention center in Chicago, a $75 million build-out project that will have capacity for 3,000 COVID-19 patients by April 24.
He also praised an innovation by the city of Detroit, which asked the Corps to design a manifold for oxygen to be piped into each of its patient pods.
“The main thing is we want to continue to be learning here and continue to think about how we would apply a design to an installation or a city we have not actually built out yet,” he said.
The Corps is engaged in 15 FEMA mission assignments with $1.2 billion in all 50 states, territories, and the District of Columbia.
“The virus gets a vote, and it’s trying to figure out how does it continue to change over time,” he said, adding that the 36,000 individuals in the Army Corps of Engineers are “not resource-constrained right now.”
