Army Corps of Engineers planning 'ICU-like' facilities for 13 states - Business Insider

The Army Corps of Engineers is working with 13 states to increase hospital bed capacity.The Corps is operating under direct mission assignments that states send to FEMA and then to the Corps for tasking, the Corps' commander said Friday said.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The Army Corps of Engineers is working with 13 states to surge hospital bed capacity and has already identified 12 buildings in New York that may be adapted for patient care.“We need something super simple,” said Corps Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, explaining the plans at the Pentagon Friday. “This is an unbelievably complicated problem, and there's no way to do this with a complicated solution.”The Corps is operating under direct mission assignments that states send to FEMA and then to the Corps for tasking, he said.“We are in the states right now doing all the planning,” said Semonite, noting that the Corps will be planning in 18 states by the evening and that governors are expecting a peak of COVID-19 cases to hit by mid-April.The steps the Corps will follow to prepare a facility include the state first nominating existing facilities, such as empty hotels, dormitories, or convention centers. The state then signs a lease with the facility and turns it over to the Corps, which contracts the work under a standard plan cleared by the Department of Health and Human Services and the White House.

Once the Corps starts working, it turns the building into an “ICU-like” facility, explained Semonite, with hospital beds, nursing stations, and everything required for patient care, including negative pressure rooms.

An ICU room in a new floor at North Shore University Hospital.

Lydia Ramsey

Semonite said hotel rooms will be converted to negative pressure by reducing the PSI so that suction results. Where in-room airflow is inadequate, the unit will be removed and replaced with a unit capable of the appropriate PSI. Zip plastic will then be installed on the door to prevent the spread of infection.FEMA and HHS would then stock the rooms with a standard set of supplies, and the state would staff the facilities with medical personnel.The Army said it was asking states who have the capability to work toward solutions on their own in order to free up the Corps to assist states with less capability.The Army said it is developing a matrix to study the needs and capabilities of all 50 states but is initially focused on hot spots, including New York, California, and New Jersey. The need requested in New York was identified as 10,000 surge hospital beds.

“We're looking at what is the slope of the curve of how many people are getting sick and what is the shortage of beds in that particular city,” said Semonite.Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy echoed a refrain from senior Pentagon leadership of late that military medical personnel are geared toward trauma patient care and Reserve and Guard medics are presently serving in civilian roles.“It's like a giant Jenga puzzle,” he said, using the tower metaphor to explain how extracting medical personnel from one role to assign them to another will cause the first need to collapse.To protect its 191,000 soldiers, the Army is looking closely at the measures put into place by Gen. Roger Cloutier in Italy and Gen. Robert Abrams in Korea, both responsible for thousands of troops in CDC level three countries. The force commanders kept unit formations intact and took aggressive measures to screen everyone entering military installations.The Army said all senior commanders are now required to establish isolation and quarantine facilities on their installations.

“This isn't forever, but it is the reality of now,” said McCarthy.The Army confirmed it has 45 COVID-19 cases, including 21 soldiers, 10 contractors, eight dependents, and six civilians as of 7 p.m. Thursday. Eight of those individuals have been hospitalized.McCarthy also said the Army is experimenting on vaccines in five tracks and will soon enter human testing.“We are prepared for an increased wave,” added Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Scott Dingle.The secretary said recruiting has gone online through social media and that training has been reduced by 50% for the time being but is already ahead of schedule for the year. Discussions are ongoing with private industry to maintain the development of weapons systems and other military needs, he said.