To cope with the influx of patients with COVID-19, the Renown Health Hospital in Reno, Nevada (west) has transformed two floors of a nearby covered parking lot into a care unit specifically for patients with moderate symptoms of the disease.
The goal? Offer these patients and the caregivers who take care of them a secure environment and direct access to the hospital’s infrastructures (laboratory, pharmacy, catering, etc.), while freeing up beds in the intensive care unit for cases the most serious.
The “alternative care site” was set up in just ten days last April by specialist companies, which equipped the two floors of the parking lot with flooring, electricity, water and ventilation networks meeting standards. sanitary facilities.
The site, with a total capacity of more than 1,400 beds separated from each other by rows of immaculate screens, was activated on November 12 by hospital management to anticipate the new outbreak of the pandemic affecting the western United States.
On the opening day, a doctor at the hospital tweeted an selfie where one could see behind him beds still folded up and under plastic envelope. An image taken up by another account which wrongly claimed that it was a “bogus hospital” having “never seen a single patient”, suggesting that the pandemic was only a “scam”.
Outgoing President Donald Trump had retweeted this critical message to his some 88 million subscribers, along with the comment “in Nevada, the election results are bogus too”, as usual arousing heated debate.
As of Wednesday, the alternative site of the Renown Health Medical Center had welcomed 350 patients since its commissioning, and 24 patients were being treated there, according to hospital management.
According to authorities in Nevada, nearly 200,000 cases of coronavirus have been identified in the state since the start of the pandemic, killing 2,673 in total.
With around 87 new cases per 100,000 population in the past seven days, Nevada has one of the highest rates of infection in the United States (6e out of 50).