Even As Tennessee Lifts Restrictions, It’s Still Building Overflow COVID-19 Hospitals

Tennessee is still preparing for the worst of COVID-19, even as the state lifts restrictions and allows daily life to resume. The state is finishing a 400-bed overflow hospital in Memphis and may build others in preparation for a resurgence of cases.

The facility in Memphis is the former Commercial Appeal newspaper offices. In four weeks, the Army Corps of Engineers has turned it into a health care facility, despite no hospital in the state coming even close to being overrun with COVID-19 patients. Hospitalizations are declining.

“We want to be prepared, and the site in Memphis is the first of several sites that are going to get us to that spot if we ever need it,” Health Commissioner Lisa Piercey says, adding that she hopes it remains empty. “I know that sounds odd to make an investment you hope to never have to use, but it’s all in the vein of being prepared.”

State officials also plan on transforming convention centers in Chattanooga, Knoxville and Nashville if needed. But as of right now, that work has been suspended, according to a spokesman with the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.

“[The United Command Group] is keeping open all of our planning options, both short- and long-term, for Tennessee’s alternate care sites, to allow the state to be as nimble as possible in executing our COVID-19 response actions and decisions,” spokesman Dean Flener tells WPLN News.

Since the pandemic began, only 1,325 people have been hospitalized in Tennessee. That’s nowhere near the initial projections. State health officials say that’s largely thanks to the effectiveness of social distancing.