If Macon sees surge of COVID-19 patients, state has a plan: A shipping container ‘hospital’
Over the next three weeks, state contractors will set up 18 shipping containers side-by-side in a parking lot outside Middle Georgia’s largest hospital.
The medically-outfitted “temporary medical units” could be used for patients who visit the emergency room at Macon’s Medical Center, Navicent Health if there is a surge of COVID-19 patients.
Current plans do not call for patients suffering from the disease caused by the new coronavirus to be treated or housed in the temporary spaces, which should be in place by May 5.
Instead, the 24-bed, makeshift medical bays would, if necessary, be for patients who show up at the emergency room with less serious ailments.
The units — with four patient “rooms” per container — will sit in a parking lot at the corner of New and Pine streets in front of the entrance to the hospital’s emergency room.
Dr. John Wood, director of the hospital’s emergency centers, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that the makeshift rooms will only be used if necessary, and that if they are “we can take care of (patients) just like regular hospital patients, just outside the main facility.”
He added that the additional space is “something we are setting up just in anticipation of a surge of patients. ... Again this is just a precautionary measure.”
The hospital has specialized units caring for COVID-19 patients. But just how many patients were being treated there has not been divulged publicly, so it isn’t clear how much of a surge it might take for the auxiliary beds to be used.
The hospital referred questions about how many COVID-19 patients it’s treating to state health officials, who aren’t sharing that information publicly.
Wood, asked if he thought the extra space will be necessary, said, “If any of us could answer that question specifically we would all seem very, very smart. No, we’re all watching the same prediction models. We’re all watching the daily numbers from the Department of Public Health and we’ve watched our peak day moved further and further back. So what we’re all hoping is that the self distancing we’ve been doing ... is hopefully lessening our peak.
“So right now we can’t really say if we’re gonna need it or not, but because we’re the tertiary referral center we want to be able to take care of the patients in the surrounding communities that might need us.”
A typical patient who might be seen at the overflow site might be, say, someone with a sprained ankle.
“Honestly,” Wood said, “I think a lot of patients would be much more comfortable knowing they’re in a unit where you’re potentially not taking care of COVID patients. So there is some separation if you’re there for some other non-infectious-related emergency.”
The medical pods are being built as part of a partnership between private entities and the Georgia Emergency Management Agency, said Spencer Hawkins, director of Bibb County’s Emergency Management Agency. Other temporary medical units will be set up in Rome, Albany and Gainesville.
Hawkins described the individual pods as a trio of side-by-side shipping containers sitting parallel next to one another. The center container, he said, serves as a hallway and the oblong containers flanking it on either side are divided with two patient rooms each, for a total of four rooms in each pod.
This story was originally published April 16, 2020 at 7:00 AM.