You can call it a symbol of progress. Tuesday, one of four mobile field hospitals came down outside St. Francis Hospital in Hartford.
March 24th you saw it go up. May 12th you are seeing it come down. Part of Connecticut’s COVID-19 Hospital surge plan, the 25 bed mobile field hospital would have served as another floor of St. Francis Hospital specifically to treat COVID-positive patients. Dr. John Rodis, the President of St. Francis Hospital said, “I thought it was a symbolic gesture going up actually to show that this was a serious issue and it was a real pandemic and that we might need the beds. On the other hand, now that it’s come down I think it’s equally symbolic that we are past the surge that we could have had.”
But with many expecting a 2nd wave in the fall, Dr. Rodis cautioned against letting our guard down. “It’s also a reminder that this is not gone. The disease isn’t over. We might need to bring it back. Hopefully we won’t. Life is going on but not as it was before.”
The disease has sickened nearly 34,000 in CT and killed more than 3,000 people. We’ve learned a lot in a short time. “It’s only been on really for a little more than 100 days although it seems like forever. We’ve learned the disease is very serious and for particular cohort of folks over 70 and with co-morbidities we’ve learned that social disparities affect it,” said Rodis.
So now the world looks toward hope, as vaccine development races forward and CT hospitals finally get their first tool in the toolbox. They got a shipment of the anti viral therapeutic Remdesivir. “We were able to procure some for Trinity Health of New England including some patients here at St. Francis who were treated as early as this weekend. I think up until now we’ve gotten 160 doses to treat patients throughout our hospitals and I think that’s very promising,” explained Dr. Rodis.
The field hospital at St. Francis is one of four the state deployed. Sharon, Danbury and Middlesex got them too. The Governor’s Foot and Horse Guard, a division of the CT National Guard, can set them up again within 48 hours