SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The Army Corps. of Engineers announced Friday that it is considering Sleep Train Arena as one of hundreds of possible sites to be used as a makeshift hospital for coronavirus patients.
The announcement comes as officials begin to shift away from using hotel and motel rooms as initially planned as alternate care facilities. But officials with Gov. Gavin Newsom's Office of Emergency Services said that it's not yet set in stone.
"At this moment, no decision has been made on placement of mobile field hospitals beyond those already operational in Riverside and Santa Clara," an official with Cal OES told ABC10.
California's 416 hospitals only have 75,000 licensed beds, which is not nearly enough to meet the state's projected demand as more people get sick from coronavirus. And the state's health care system will likely be overwhelmed in the coming weeks, based on artificial intelligence models run by the state.
Newsom said earlier this week that the state needs at least 50,000 new beds to keep up with what's expected to be a surge of new COVID-19 patients.
Newsom said 30,000 beds will come from hospital surge plans, which call for solutions such as setting up tents in hospital parking lots. That means California will need 20,000 beds outside the hospital system.
So far, the state has lined up 3,000 beds, leaving Californians with a projected shortage of 17,000 beds. State officials have been in the process of identifying places to house patients such as convention centers, fairgrounds, hotels and motels to set up temporary hospitals.
United States Army Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, commanding general and chief engineer of the Army Corps of Engineers, said in a press conference Friday that they are eyeing the arena as a space to house COVID-19 and trauma patients.
Semonite said they've identified 114 different facilities across the country.
"Right now, in Sacramento, we're looking at... 360 [beds] — some of those are COVID some of those are non-COVID," Semonite said. "That's just in what’s called the Sleep Train Arena out of California where we've been asked to look. We're mainly doing this city by city. The governors make a list, my guys call them back and say here’s what this one city talks about."
The arena is owned by the Sacramento Kings. Officials with the team did not respond to a request for comment.
In a joint statement, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and Mayor Pro Tem Angelique Ashby said they are working with the state but would not mention Sleep Train Arena as a potential location.
"We are working closely with the state on every possible option to increase hospital bed capacity as needed," they said. "There have not yet been any decisions made on any specific site."
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