Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Gov. J.B. Pritzker stood together in April 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic to showcase the rapid transformation of an empty convention hall at McCormick Place East into a medical facility with 500 beds — and 2,500 more to be installed later.
It turned out the makeshift COVID-19 hospital wasn’t needed because existing hospitals were able, after all, to meet the demand of treating coronavirus patients. So the beds were moved to warehouses, and the facility was dismantled as quickly as it was set up.
Now, with at least 8,500 refugees from Latin America having been transported to Chicago from Texas since last August in a political tug-of-war over national immigration policy, those beds are available for use in temporary shelters.
The city kept 126 full-size beds from the McCormick Place temporary hospital. City officials say it would be difficult to set them up quickly because the beds include a mattress, headboard, footboard, bed frame and no linens.
Instead, the Lightfoot administration chose to send cots for immigrants to sleep on at temporary shelters because they’re “easy to deploy and set up during an emergency,” according to Mary May, a spokeswoman for the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications.
“At this time, it is simply not as practical to use the limited number of beds we have in storage.”
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That’s drawing criticism from Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th).
“One of the biggest things we need are beds,” Sigcho-Lopez said. “We can certainly use them.”
Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere / Sun-Times
The state has kept 750 “quick beds” and 375 hospital beds from the McCormick Place field hospital, according to Kevin Sur, a spokesman for the Illinois Emergency Management Agency and Office of Homeland Security. A quick bed is a heavy, sturdy, tubular metal frame bed. The hospital beds are powered to help position a patient for better care and recovery, he said.
Sur said the state is willing to provide those beds to the city, but the city hasn’t requested them.
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Sigcho-Lopez said the fact that the city hasn’t asked the state for the beds shows “a lack of coordination between the city and the state. These are some of the resources that could be used to address this humanitarian crisis. They had months to plan for this, and they failed.”
chicago.suntimes.com
It turned out the makeshift COVID-19 hospital wasn’t needed because existing hospitals were able, after all, to meet the demand of treating coronavirus patients. So the beds were moved to warehouses, and the facility was dismantled as quickly as it was set up.
Now, with at least 8,500 refugees from Latin America having been transported to Chicago from Texas since last August in a political tug-of-war over national immigration policy, those beds are available for use in temporary shelters.
The city kept 126 full-size beds from the McCormick Place temporary hospital. City officials say it would be difficult to set them up quickly because the beds include a mattress, headboard, footboard, bed frame and no linens.
Instead, the Lightfoot administration chose to send cots for immigrants to sleep on at temporary shelters because they’re “easy to deploy and set up during an emergency,” according to Mary May, a spokeswoman for the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications.
“At this time, it is simply not as practical to use the limited number of beds we have in storage.”
Related
That’s drawing criticism from Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th).
“One of the biggest things we need are beds,” Sigcho-Lopez said. “We can certainly use them.”
Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere / Sun-Times
The state has kept 750 “quick beds” and 375 hospital beds from the McCormick Place field hospital, according to Kevin Sur, a spokesman for the Illinois Emergency Management Agency and Office of Homeland Security. A quick bed is a heavy, sturdy, tubular metal frame bed. The hospital beds are powered to help position a patient for better care and recovery, he said.
Sur said the state is willing to provide those beds to the city, but the city hasn’t requested them.
Related
Sigcho-Lopez said the fact that the city hasn’t asked the state for the beds shows “a lack of coordination between the city and the state. These are some of the resources that could be used to address this humanitarian crisis. They had months to plan for this, and they failed.”
More than 1,200 beds from McCormick Place COVID-19 temporary hospital go unused amid migrant housing crisis
The city kept 126 beds but isn’t using them. The state has 1,125 more beds from the makeshift hospital but says the city hasn’t asked for them. And the city is missing out on $30 million from Springfield to support migrants.
chicago.suntimes.com
