St. Clair College's SportsPlex will be transformed into a field hospital to prepare for a possible surge of COVID-19 patients.
Windsor Regional Hospital announced it came to an agreement with the college to use the facility at 2000 Talbot Rd. Thursday.
According to the release, WRH will transform the building to an offsite hospital for up to 100 patients in the recovery phase from the virus.
“Best case scenario is we do not need to move any patients to the St. Clair College site, but we have to be ready for the worst," says hospital President and CEO David Musyj.
He says area hospitals have already cleared up capacity in anticipation of the virus' peak between April 5 and April 8, so the SportsPlex will only be used if needed.
"It's going to be a rough few weeks but we're up for it and our staff is ready. It is stressful for them but we've put ourselves in a good position from a capacity point of view to be able to deal with this," says Musyj.
The field hospital is expected to be ready to accept patients in a week.
- with files from AM800's Rob Hindi