Members of a federal disaster relief team are opening a field hospital in the parking deck of the University of Mississippi Medical Center. The facility will care for up to 20 coronavirus patients with mild symptoms, and another facility will offer outpatient monoclonal antibody treatments. State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs says the 32 person federal disaster relief team is only the beginning, and the state has requested hundreds of nurses, as well as dozens of physicians and respiratory therapists.
“The main thing we need is the personnel,” says Dr. Dobbs. “Staffing is our main sort of bottleneck. But we need personnel from anywhere we can get ‘em and we will strive to. We’re really trying to pull staff from anywhere we can to take care of Mississippians.
The University of Mississippi Medical Center, the state’s only tier 1 medical facility, is unable to staff all of the hospital’s beds due to staffing shortages. And the beds they do have are full, according to Associate Vice-Chancellor for Clinical Affairs Dr. Alan Jones. He says the record number of new coronavirus cases yesterday will lead to hundreds more hospitalizations.
“When you’re seeing a field hospital at a major academic medical center, we’re pretty much at a collapsed type system,” says Dr. Jones. “This is not enough beds to support the State of Mississippi. If we continue to see that rise like we saw today, we will continue to see problematic placement of patients and we will need more facilities like this or some other pop-off valve if we continue to see that.”
Dr. Dobbs says the state has also requested the U.S.S. Comfort as a means to increase the number of hospital beds in the state, however, he says it is unlikely to occur due to the approaching hurricane season.
