South Carolina hospital moving patients so it can become coronavirus treatment center

In an effort to prepare for the worst, Prisma Health announced Tuesday it is converting one of its hospitals into a dedicated coronavirus treatment center.

Patients have been moved from the North Greenville Hospital to other locations as teams work to modify the building to better combat COVID-19, according to a Prisma statement emailed to McClatchy News.

“We hope it’s not needed, but we want it to be available if we see that it’s necessary,” said C. Wendell James III, MD, chief clinical officer for Prisma Health-Upstate. “We already had extensive disaster preparedness plans in place, and we have continued to aggressively strengthen them since January when the outbreak first began globally.”

Other Prisma hospitals will continue to treat patients infected with coronavirus, but this new effort will provide much higher capacity to treat COVID-19, the statement said.

This story was originally published March 17, 2020 at 4:21 PM with the headline "South Carolina hospital moving patients so it can become coronavirus treatment center."