In case of coronavirus overflow, officials plan field hospital in Beaufort school gym

COVID-19 patients will be treated in cots at a temporary field hospital set up in Beaufort Middle School’s gym if a surge of coronavirus cases overwhelms available beds at Beaufort Memorial Hospital, officials announced Friday.

State and local emergency management officials surveyed the site with the S.C. National Guard and Army Corps of Engineers this week and determined it could be used to treat patients who “do not require the intensive care and equipment reserved for critically-ill COVID-19 patients,” according to a hospital statement.

“This is very much an exercise in preparation, and a resource we hope we will never need,” said Beaufort Memorial CEO Russell Baxley in the statement, urging residents to prevent the virus’ spread.

“We would rather have it ready for use just in case,” he said.

Plans for the gym include setting up 50 cots, with the potential to add 25 more if necessary. The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control must approve the plan before the hospital can begin readying the facility.

The hospital expects to have the gym supplied and ready by the end of next week, it said.

The decision to put the field hospital in use would be made by hospital officials if Beaufort Memorial reached maximum capacity with its approximately 175 acute-care beds, Baxley said in an email.

Statewide surge plan will add 3,000 beds

Beaufort Memorial’s announcement of plans for the alternate care site comes days after S.C. emergency management officials detailed preparations in place across the state for an overflow of COVID-19 patients.

Officials project 3,500 hospitalized coronavirus patients in early May, said Maj. Gen. Van McCarty, the state’s adjutant general, at a news conference on Monday.

As of Friday, 5,545 of the state’s hospital beds, just under half of the total available, were unoccupied, according to data on DHEC’s website, although that number can change daily. Hospitals are operating at unusually low occupancy after canceling many elective surgeries and procedures.

McCarty said the state’s surge plan would allow for 3,000 additional beds, bringing statewide available beds to around 9,000 by early May.

State officials plan to use sports arenas, tent facilities and open recently shuttered hospitals to add beds. North of Columbia, a former hotel is being converted into a field hospital, The State reported. The new facilities are classified according to a tiered system.

Tier 3 facilities are traditional hospitals that provide critical care, including ventilators, and will treat seriously ill COVID-19 patients and other patients with different injuries and illnesses.

The Beaufort Middle School field hospital will be a tier 2 facility, said Beaufort Memorial in a news release. It will be able to provide patients “high quality, professional healthcare services that are less intensive and non-emergent,” said Courtney McDermott, a spokesperson for the hospital, in an email.

Tier 1 facilities are designed primarily for the isolation and quarantine of COVID-19 patients, she said.

Beaufort Memorial is “fine-tuning processes for triaging and transporting patients to the appropriate care site, if necessary,” Baxley said in the hospital’s statement. The school is located less than 2 miles south of the hospital in Beaufort.

Both the hospital and the Beaufort County School District have contracts with the national food supplier Sodexo, which could be used at the gym location. The school district will extend access to Wi-Fi networks and provide other resources, the hospital said.

If COVID-19 patients are treated at the gym, Beaufort Memorial will clean and disinfect the building with the same standards used in the hospital to ensure it is safe for regular use when classes resume.

Beaufort County School District Superintendent Frank Rodriguez has supported the plan, said Baxley.

“This is truly a collaborative effort to keep our community, patients and staff as safe as possible during these unprecedented times,” Baxley said.

This story was originally published April 10, 2020 at 2:53 PM.

Lucas Smolcic Larson

The Island Packet

843-560-9612

Lucas Smolcic Larson joined The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette as a projects reporter in 2019, after graduating from Brown University. His work has won Rhode Island and South Carolina Press Association awards for education and investigative reporting. He previously worked as an intern at The Washington Post and the Investigative Reporting Workshop in Washington D.C. Lucas hails from central Pennsylvania and speaks Spanish and Portuguese.