Field hospital beds going up at Miami-Dade’s Youth Fair to help COVID-19 strain

Construction crews are building temporary hospital beds planned for the Youth Fair campus in Westchester as the county’s health system prepares for a surge of coronavirus cases.

Crews arrived Monday night from a Kentucky company, Emergency Disaster Services, to build the first 250-bed hospital, which is expected to be completed by Friday.

A spokesman for the Youth Fair said Wednesday another 250-bed hospital was going up as well, and a status report from the county’s Emergency Operations Center on Tuesday night switched the expected capacity from 250 to 500. But Wednesday’s report had the capacity back down to 250 beds. Representatives of the operations center were not available for comment.

Florida’s Division of Emergency Management is providing the field hospital, and it’s the first known construction of a field hospital to produce sick-bed capacity in Miami-Dade during the coronavirus pandemic.

“We’re already a day ahead. ... We’re well under way,” Charlie Martin, director of operations at the site, said Tuesday shortly before 1 p.m. He was directing construction of a commissary tent to produce meals for both patients and medical staff at the facility. He said construction should be finished Friday, but it’s not known when the field hospital would become operational.

Crews were getting an existing tent ready for creation of the hospital, including creation of a temporary floor and clearing the site.

Erika Benitez, a spokeswoman for Miami-Dade Fire and Rescue, said Tuesday that the county requested 2,000 field hospital beds from Florida’s Division of Emergency Management. She said those field beds would arrive in modules “and we will add as necessary.”

Benitez said there were no immediate plans to staff it since the county’s existing hospital system still has capacity. “If the situation in Miami-Dade deteriorates to the point that we need it, we will open,” she said.

The Youth Fair offered use of a tented area off Coral Way on the fairgrounds site, said Ray Casas, a spokesman for the Youth Fair, the nonprofit that rents the fairgrounds at Tamiami Park from Miami-Dade. On Wednesday, Casas said a second 250-bed hospital was going up on the fairgrounds, and a third site is ready if another 250 beds as needed.

Mayor Carlos Gimenez has issued emergency orders closing thousands of businesses, parks and entertainment options in an effort to reduce human contact and slow the spread of COVID-19 in order to ease pressure on hospitals.

Eddie Cora, president of the Youth Fair organization, said the tent was left over from the yearly March event that was canceled in the first emergency order Gimenez issued on the coronavirus on March 12. “If we can’t have a fair, at least we can help the community,” Cora said.

Cora said Miami-Dade plans on running the hospital if COVID-19 cases overwhelm existing facilities. He said the 250 beds would be separated, with special medical-grade laundry facilities, food-prep facilities and break areas for doctors and nurses.

“This is being built for an ‘if it is needed’ “ scenario, he said.

This story was originally published March 24, 2020 at 11:20 AM.