Massive UNCC field hospital could treat COVID-19 cases this month – if it’s built at all.
A nascent 3,000-bed field hospital operating out of six UNC Charlotte residence halls could be treating COVID-19 cases in as early as three weeks, government officials said Friday.
According to figures released by Mecklenburg County Manager Dena Diorio, the county could have as many 8,900 hospitalizations by April 25 — if residents fail to follow stay-at-home orders or practice social distancing.
It was not immediately clear how many of those cases would be COVID-19. But Diorio said the total would include almost 3,300 patients in intensive care and some 1,600 on ventilators.
Those numbers could swamp existing bed space at Atrium and Novant hospitals, with the spillover aimed at a temporary campus hospital that was publicly mentioned for the first time on Thursday.
The field hospital at UNCC would be one of the largest of its kind in the country, exceeding the 2,500-bed capacity of the emergency treatment facility set up in the Javits Center in New York City.
By comparison, the campus hospital would have more than twice the beds of Carolinas Medical Center Main in uptown Charlotte, and it would be erected under an extraordinarily tight deadline — if it is built at all.
According to Diorio, if 30 percent of county residents follow existing safety guidelines, the demand for COVID-19-related hospital beds, intensive care and ventilators could be cut in half, and would not reach their peak until the second week in May.
Robert Graham, deputy director of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Emergency Management, said at the county’s Friday press conference that if residents can help slow the spread of the disease, the county may be able to weather the pandemic with existing medical facilities.
“If we cannot flatten the curve, that creates a huge dilemma for this community,” Graham added.
As of Friday afternoon, the county had 601 cases of COVID-19 and three deaths.
How long county and hospital officials have been considering an overflow treatment facility at UNCC is unclear.
Chancellor Phil Dubois announced in an emailed statement Thursday morning that the school had made six dorms in its South Village available for the county’s COVID-19 response.
That afternoon, the heads of Atrium and Novant, the county’s two major hospital chains, issued a letter calling for the county to build and pay for a 3,000-bed facility on the sprawling campus north of uptown.
Asked for more details Friday, spokespersons for Atrium and Novant declined comment and referred questions to the county.
Even as the planning between local, state and federal officials goes forward, major questions remain: How will that big of a facility be staffed? How will it be equipped?
Diorio acknowledged that the coronavirus has created “a critical need” for medical personnel “that we’re continuing to work through” with the hospitals and its government partners.
Meanwhile, she said, Mecklenburg “is not immune” to critical nationwide shortages of vital medical supplies and safety equipment now plaguing efforts to combat the disease.
UNC Charlotte appears to be the first school of the University of North Carolina system to agree to be repurposed to fight the pandemic. Whether other UNC campuses are under consideration is not clear. Two spokesmen for UNC did not respond Friday to emails from the Observer.
Nationwide, several campuses that have already closed to their students because of the pandemic have volunteered vacant facilities for critical medical space.
At Middlebury College in Vemont, not only did school officials volunteer the use of some of its buildings to its medical center but drained the campus hockey rink to create space for a pop-up hospital, if one is needed, according to the Chronicle of High Education.
Anthony Monaco, president of Tufts University, recently wrote in the Boston Globe that colleges now have a glut of empty buildings already equipped with internet, IT services and dining halls that can be enlisted in the coronavirus fight.
Colleges and universities, he wrote, “must take a leadership role in relieving this unprecedented stress on our health care system.”
Tufts already has offered dorm space to hold non-virus patients so the campus hospital can focus its facilities on COVID-19 patients.
At New York University, at the heart of the country’s worst outbreak of the disease, school officials have asked the students still in dorms to move out to make room for potential overflow hospital beds.
That said, dorm rooms do not necessarily offer an ideal medical space, particularly for the treatment of COVID-19 patients, Terri Rebmann, director of the Institute of Biosecurity at St. Louis University, told the Chronicle.
Dorms, she said, often lack hallways wide enough to allow easy access of large medical equipment. There is also the perceived risk to students and staff if coronavirus patients are being treated nearby.
Even if there were no exposure risk, “there would still be a lot of concern from parents, if there was one dorm of university students and then — next door, or even across campus — there was another dorm filled with COVID-19 patients,” Rebmann said.
As of now the six dorms at UNCC being set aside for the possible hospital are vacant, and students with belongings in the rooms have been asked to clear them out, said Colleen Penhall, the school’s chief communications officer. That will take place in two waves over the next two weeks.
To minimize health risks, the students must schedule their check-outs, bring no more than one helper and practice social distancing, among other safety requirements, Penhall said.
That will leave about 1 percent of the student population, or about 300 students, remaining on campus in other residence halls, Penhall said.
