WEST ALLIS, WI (Wisconsin Radio Network-WSAU) – Wednesday marks the first day of operation, for the state’s coronavirus field hospital at State Fair Park in West Allis. Department of Health Services Secretary designee Andrea Palm says the facility will take patients who are transferred from other medical facilities. “This facility will treat COVID positive patients only. We will not transfer from other hospitals patients that are not COVID positive.”
Palm says the 530 bed facility will house “lower acuity” COVID patients who still require care but are closer to being released to return home. “The goal is to take the pressure off local hospitals to treat the more severely ill COVID patients as well as their non-COVID patient load.”
The State Fair Park hospital is ready to accept up to 50 patients today, although it’s unclear how many will be transferred immediately. The facility in West Allis was proposed in April, but never opened because hospitals were not overcrowded at that time. Now hospital capacity in some parts of the state is above 80-percent.
Wisconsin’s surge in COVID cases is among the worst in the nation, and has strained the resources of hospitals in the northeast and central Wisconsin.
