Monterey County releases list of potential care, housing sites to be used if there is a COVID-19 surge
MONTEREY COUNTY, Calif. (KION) Monterey County has been preparing for a potential surge in COVID-19 cases, and it has been looking for alternate care and alternate housing sites.
The Care and Shelter branch of the Emergency Operations Center has been looking for sites since the County declared a local emergency and a Shelter in Place order went into effect should the need arise. The sites could house residents if there is a surge in the number of COVID-19 cases that overwhelms the local healthcare system.
The Emergency Operations Center said it has currently identified these locations:
- Monterey County Fairgrounds
- San Lorenzo Park in King City
- Laguna Seca Recreation Area
- Joby Aviation facility at Marina airport
- sites in the Salinas area
An alternate care site is a facility that can accommodate patients beyond the capacity of local hospitals. It can hold patients who need more medical care. The County said Natividad, Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital, CHOMP and Mee Memorial Hospital requested the sites and helped coordinate with them.
An alternate housing site is temporary housing for those who have COVID-19 or are being monitored who need little or no medical care and live in compromised, congested or congregate living situations without an alternative.
The alternate housing sites at Marina Airport and San Lorenzo Park will have trailers that can sleep up to eight people. And the county said it'll be getting 100 of these trailers from the state from FEMA.
To come up with the locations, the County said the team consulted with private building owners, cities, CSUMB and federal installations.
“The Marina Airport was identified quickly by City Manager Layne Long as an ideal alternate care site,” said County Administrative Officer Charles McKee. “A short Friday afternoon discussion led to a Saturday morning tour and unbelievable openness and support from Marina and Joby Aviation to use their site. Joby is in a class by themselves for innovation in personal aviation and now in contributions to our community by offering this site and their full support.”
The county said the Joby Aviation site will include a "mega tent" for patients.
The county also said it will announce more locations if they need to be opened.
If there is a COVID-19 surge in Monterey County, the sites could open in late April, May or June.
However, CHOMP--the hospital with the most cases right now--is not anticipating a surge that'll overflow their facility.
The hospital has 100 beds available right now--that's about 60 percent of its capacity. But representatives say they're preparing for a surge nonetheless.
“We do have, internally, two alternate care sites planned out as part of our own internal response,” CHOMP Safety Officer and Incident Commander Daniel McKernan said.
Those two internal sites are in addition to the ones set up with other hospitals throughout the county.
The county says their plans for alternate care and housing sites have been in the works since last month.
