Army soldiers from Fort Carson and Fort Lewis set up the Intermediate Care Ward at the field hospital for non-COVID-19 patients at CenturyLink Field Events Center. (Amanda Snyder/Seattle Times/TNS)
- Author:
- Anchorage Daily News
- April 10, 2020
SEATTLE — Even as some questions remain about the extent of the outbreak in Washington state, Gov. Jay Inslee Wednesday announced he would return to the federal government the field hospital recently assembled in Seattle’s CenturyLink Field Event Center to help the health care system cope with the new coronavirus.
With the USNS Comfort still stationed in New York, and the USNS Mercy in Los Angeles, Inslee’s decision could mark the first return of hospital beds to the federal government during the pandemic from anywhere in the nation.
Inslee in recent days has cited more favorable projections for what’s to come next in the outbreak of COVID-19 in Washington, the state that at one time led the nation in cases and deaths. As of Wednesday afternoon, there were 9,097 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Washington, with 421 deaths.
The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation recently sharply reduced its estimate of how many Washingtonians are likely to die from COVID-19, and it has suggested the state may already have passed its peak for COVID-19 hospitalizations.
Still, those downward revisions come as state health officials have struggled to post full and timely reports for hospital admissions of patients with suspected or confirmed diagnoses of COVID-19.
In addition to the return of the field hospital, Inslee announced Sunday that he was returning 400 ventilators to the federal government’s national stockpile, to assist other states in worse shape.
In his statement Wednesday, the governor said the move to disassemble the field hospital will allow the facility to “be deployed to another state facing a more significant need.”
The field hospital, which just last week was toured by the Army’s chief of staff, never treated a single patient, according to Inslee spokesman Mike Faulk.
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