Utah Ready To Open Temporary COVID-19 Hospital

Utah set up a temporary hospital from April to June at The Mountain America Expo Center in Sandy in case COVID-19 overwhelmed the hospitals, but it wasn’t needed, according to an article on the KSL website. 

They didn’t need it at the time, but now, with record numbers of COVID-19 patients in Utah’s hospitals, health officials say they may revisit the plan.

“There are two semis that remain [at The Mountain America Expo Center], so that we can very rapidly set that back up again,” Joe Dougherty with the Utah Department of Public Safety said in the article.

Currently, if a hospital is overwhelmed, they can move patients to other hospitals within the same medical system. The University of Utah recently reported that its intensive care unit was at 95 percent capacity.

The Department of Emergency Management has already set up an alternate care center with 260 beds in The Mountain America Expo Center originally had 260 beds, but can expand the to handle up to 1,000, according to an earlier KSL article.

Read the full KSL article.