HARTFORD, Conn. — The National Guard began setting up a field hospital at the Connecticut Convention Center on Saturday morning.
“The guardsmen are the workforce behind building this and getting everything set up,” said Captain David Pytlik, “this is all about supporting the medical community,” he said.
When complete, it will have 646 beds but the goal is to never have to use them.
“Everybody’s hope is that we never have to put a single patient in here but if we do we want to make sure it’s safe, secure, and that we can adequately care for people in a way that everyone would expect,” said Dr. James Cardon, Chief Clinical Integration Officer at Hartford Healthcare.
The annex hospital will he run by Hartford Healthcare.
It won’t be used to treat any critical patients who will need things like ventilators, but rather as a recovery center.
FOX61's Gaby Molina has an inside look at Saturday's set up in real time.
“The idea is that perhaps these are patients that aren’t well enough to recover at home or maybe their family circumstances are that they can’t recover at home. Perhaps they have someone who’s immunocompromised that they can’t go home to. They need a safe space where they’re not putting anyone else in jeopardy,” said Pytlik.
Doctors with Hartford HealthCare say they’re preparing for the possibility of overflow when it comes to those patients who are still recovering.
“As the surge comes, and we’re not peaked yet in Connecticut, there’s a possibility that either on the front end with admissions or on the back end with patients that need to go home we need an alternative for them to go to,” said Dr. Mark Prete, president of Hartford Healthcare Medical Group.
“With this annex facility set up, we can all have a little bit more comfort that there’s an adequate capacity beds in our hospital system,” said Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin.
If it ever does need to be used, it will have medical equipment as well as doctors, nurses, therapists and people for patient support.
The national guard will continue setting up the field hospital next week.
Hartford HealthCare shared a time lapse video of the National Guard in action Saturday.
