NEW BRITAIN, Conn. — Tuesday, the Connecticut National Guard worked on transforming Kaiser Hall at CCSU into a recovery center for COVID-19 patients.
The facility will additionally be used for those who have housing situations that do not allow them to return home until they test negative due to at-risk family members.
“Basically this is to provide surge capacity for recovering COVID-19 patients that are being treated at the Hartford Healthcare system and other area hospitals. If there is a patient surge this space is available before they head home,” says Staff Sergeant Steven Tucker.
The facility will have a total of 200 beds.
“The bed setup takes about a day or so. It takes quite a bit of coordination with our partnering agencies and working together with the fire marshal’s office to determine what’s up to code and set up to hospital specifications,” says Staff Sergeant Tucker.
This has now become a familiar routine for the CT National Guard. The last couple of weeks they’ve been setting up multiple remote testing sites and mobile hospitals. One of the sites has already been put to use.
“The one facility that I know of that we’ve been getting use of is the recovery center in Stamford. We have a team from the U.S. army reserve take care some of the recovering patients in Stamford. As we know that’s one of the hardest hit areas, they’ve had a need for it,” says Staff Sergeant Steven Tucker.
The recovery facility is expected to be ready in 3-4 days.