Gov. Jay Inslee’s office on Wednesday announced that the state will be returning a field hospital deployed to CenturyLink Field Event Center to the U.S. Department of Defense.
The 250-bed facility, for which setup began on March 30, was intended to help Washington state’s health care system tend to non Covid-19 patients in the event of a hospital surge.
But just three days after announcing the facility was ready to receive patients, officials say they’re returning the hospital to the federal government.
The action is aimed at helping another state with a more significant need for hospital capacity at this time, according to the Governor’s Office. The facility did not see any patients during the time it was slated to operate in Seattle.
“We requested this resource before our physical distancing strategies were fully implemented and we had considerable concerns that our hospitals would be overloaded with Covid-19 cases,” Inslee said in a press release.
“But we haven’t beat this virus yet, and until we do, it has the potential to spread rapidly if we don’t continue the measures we’ve put in place.”
State officials also say they’ve recently procured 1,000 hospital beds and over 900 ventilators to assist hospitals responding to the Covid-19 emergency.
Additionally, the state is leasing the former Astria Regional Medical Center in Yakima to serve as a 250-bed field hospital if a need arises in Central Washington.
