Duckworth, Pritzker, Lightfoot tour COVID-19 facilities at McCormick Place
State leaders toured McCormick Place Friday, one day after the alternate care facility saw its first COVID-19 patients.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and health officials briefly toured the makeshift overflow site for Chicago-area hospitals.
McCormick Place has begun to accept COVID-19 patients to lessen the burden on the regional health care system. The facility takes patients from hospital partners only.
State leaders announced plans in March to transform the 2.6 million-square-foot convention center. The project is being constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers, the Illinois National Guard and local trade union labor.
The facility now has more than 2,200 patient rooms and is expected to house about 3,000 rooms by late April. It will be staffed by 400 health care professionals.
"Hall B, where we are currently standing, represents a new model for care for crises," Dr. Christina Bratis of the DuPage Medical Group, the site's clinical chief of staff, said Friday. "What makes this place so unique is its ability to deliver care across a wide spectrum of medical severity from the lowest acuity to those with moderate and even high-acuity illness."
The layout is modeled after a typical hospital, Bratis said, with 15 tents surrounding a central nursing station. This allows for close monitoring of patients.
Inside each tent is a headboard that can deliver in-line oxygen, vacuum and suctioning for specific medical procedures and power.
Each tent is designed to provide a continuous flow of air with outflow through the back. Such air pressure is meant to keep the virus from escaping into the common areas of the hall.
Bratis said the facility can treat COVID-19 patients regardless of symptom severity.
"One of the things that we've learned from this pandemic is that the needs for hospitals are difficult to predict when the course of the infection is also difficult to predict," she said. "With these features if the load of patients is due to a lot of low-acuity, we can take care of them. Similarly, if there is an overload of patients that is more severely ill, we can take care of them too."