Army Corps has a plan to convert hotels, dorms into coronavirus hospital rooms. Here’s how
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is planning to convert more than 10,000 empty hotel and college dorm rooms into hospital rooms to treat coronavirus cases in New York City and is considering similar operations for Washington state and California, the Corps’ commanding general said on Friday.
“These hotels are empty. The people don’t have jobs,” Lt. Gen. Todd T. Semonite, chief of engineers and commanding general of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, told reporters at the Pentagon.
“We’ll go in and cut a contract and be able to have the state set up a lease for that particular facility, and then we would then take the building over. And in an exceptionally short amount of days we would go in and turn this into an ICU-like facility,” he said, referring to hospital intensive care units. The final plan still has to be approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he said.
The Corps of Engineers is in talks with governors in Washington state and California about taking similar action, he said.
The governors have asked for solutions that could be ready in just a few weeks, Semonite said. The states would be responsible for staffing the converted hospitals.
“We’ve got to do something very, very quick.” Semonite said. “Most governors are saying their peak is about the middle of April so this is not a ‘take all the time in the world to do it.’ This is, ‘just barely, what are the most important things we have to do?’ and be able to come up with a good enough solution.”
The hotel or dorm rooms would follow a blueprint design that he said was just approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Corps did not immediately make the design public, saying it would be discussed publicly in further detail next week.
Semonite said using existing hotel and dorm space was the fastest way to generate the amount of hospital beds the country is likely to need.
“We’re looking very hard at California, the state of Washington, we’ve already been to New Jersey,” Semonite said, when asked where else the Corps is developing plans. “We’re really looking at where’s the biggest demand and we go to those states first.”
In New York the Corps has finished looking at 12 properties, including SUNY College dormitories, five hotels and the Javits convention center.
FEMA has already provided the Corps $1 million to complete the initial design and site assessments to quickly convert the rooms, he said. “And they [FEMA] basically said, ‘Whatever you need, you keep coming back. That’s why we are in states right now, doing all the planning.”
The Corps will contract out work to convert a hotel room’s existing self-contained air conditioning unit so that it is turned into a “negative pressure room” — a requirement to treat and isolate someone with coronavirus.
“That’s why I like hotel rooms, because almost every hotel room has a little tiny unit back in the corner and is self-contained for that particular room. So we want to bring the pressure down 2 or 3 PSI [pounds per square inch], and you actually adjust that unit to suck more air put down through the bathroom vent to be able to have a negative pressure,” Semonite said.
Then, to seal the room in, “on the door you put a great big piece of plastic with a zipper on it so you zip in, go into the room,” he said.
The Corps would set up each hotel or dormitory hallway like a hospital ward, with a nurses station in the hall and a crash cart for patients with life-threatening emergencies, he said.
“And if we can’t use the existing [wall air conditioner] units we’re gonna rip it out and put another one back in,” he said.
This story was originally published March 20, 2020 at 6:56 PM.
