By Dan Hounsell, Senior Editor, Facility Market

As coronavirus vaccines rolled out nationwide in early 2021, many healthcare systems began to close the field hospitals they had opened in 2020 in response to the overwhelming surge of new COVID-19 cases. Now, as the fourth surge of the disease rises nationwide, field hospitals are open again.

The University of Mississippi Medical Center will open a second field hospital in one of its parking garages, another attempt at propping up a hospital system on the verge of collapse due to a surge of COVID-19 patients, according to Mississippi Today.

Samaritan’s Purse, an evangelical Christian humanitarian aid organization, will build and staff the field hospital, which is expected to contain 30-50 patient beds. An estimated 5-10 of those beds will be ICU beds. None of the 50 or so beds in the field hospital UMMC are ICU level.

Over the past week, Mississippi broke its single-day COVID-19 case record three times. On Wednesday, Dr. Alan Jones, UMMC associate vice chancellor for clinical affairs, said that failure of the hospital system in Mississippi would occur within 5-10 days if the rate of hospitalizations did not subside. It has not.

The staffing crisis at UMMC is so dire that the hospital has enlisted the help of second year medical student volunteers to keep the original field hospital operating. The volunteers are not treating patients, but transporting them to and from the field hospital, as well as performing other upkeep duties, including bringing meals and changing bed linens.