Missouri county requests funds for off-site hospital amid COVID-19 spike

Officials in Springfield, Mo., are requesting state funds to establish an “alternate care site” for COVID-19 patients to help relieve the pressure on overwhelmed local hospitals.

The coronavirus has made a comeback in Missouri, and the highly contagious delta variant in particular has been linked to case spikes that are among the highest per capita in the country. 

On Wednesday, the Springfield-Greene County Health Department and the Springfield-Greene County Office of Emergency Management submitted a funding request for an alternate care site to the state. The facility would be used for transitional care for stable COVID-19 patients. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention refers to alternate care sites as “non-traditional environments, such as converted hotels or mobile field medical units.” They are often called field hospitals.

There were 231 patients being treated for COVID-19 in Greene County hospitals as of Wednesday, the health department said; 104 of those are in critical care and 61 are on ventilators. 

Greene County is averaging more than 196 cases per day, and “the increase in severe illness is projected to outpace hospital capacity,” officials said in a statement. 

The cost of the alternate care facility is not yet known, nor is it clear where it could be established or when it would be fully functional.

Coronavirus cases nationally have more than doubled since June, but the increase is especially sharp in areas with low vaccination rates. In Greene County, only 40 percent of eligible residents have been fully vaccinated. 

The county was one of several hot spots officially labeled by the Missouri Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday.