While Ebola units have highly trained staff and the best equipment, they have relatively few rooms for patients, according to an article on the Bloomberg website.
Only four hospitals in the country have high-level containment units and each has the capacity to treat only a handful of Ebola patients at once.
“If there are any more mishaps we’re going to need more beds,” Robert Glatter, an emergency room doctor at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, said in the article.
Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, which is treating Amber Vinson, the second Dallas healthcare worker to be infected by Ebola, has capacity for three patients in its biocontainment unit.
The National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, which is treating Nina Pham, the first Dallas healthcare worker to be infected, has capacity to take two patients.
The biocontainment facility at the Nebraska Medical Center, which is treating NBC cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, would most likely be able to handle two to three patients at a time, the article said.
A fourth biocontainment facility in Montana has three patient rooms.