Banner UMC’s drive up system is for emergency room triage for a variety of illnesses and is not for random testing for COVID-19. It has been put in place to keep crowds from the ER and protect the health of patients and staff.

Earlier this week, the state's Department of Health Services announced the need to double our hospital and ICU bed capacity as we near the peak of the coronavirus outbreak in Arizona.

Jessica Rigler, assistant director of public health preparedness for the Arizona Department of Health Services, answers a few questions about preparedness: 

Other regions impacted by the COVID-19 virus have created places where people who tested positive can go to wait out there symptoms rather than take the virus home to other family members. Is there anything like this in the works anywhere in Arizona?

At this time, there are no facilities designated for this purpose, but it is a strategy we are considering as part of our comprehensive planning efforts.

People are concerned about the need for more hospital beds and are wondering what the state is doing to support counties in this effort. Can you please provide information about this?

There are several steps being taken to address this:

  •  Dr. Cara Christ sent a letter to hospitals urging them to conduct planning to increase capacity; 
  •  Governor Ducey issued an executive order requiring facilities to expand their bed space by 50%; 
  •  We are partnering with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to identify alternative care sites around the states that can be converted to hospitals or low acuity step down units in order to increase the total number of available beds across the state.

Will Arizona be receiving more ventilators soon? If not, why not?

Arizona has put in a federal resource request for 5,000 additional ventilators, which is making its way through the approval process. We do not yet know how many, if any, will be provided. We have also urged hospitals (see letter reference above), to identify additional medical devices that can support patients in need of ventilation and have surveyed ambulatory surgery centers to identify additional ventilators outside of hospitals that can support increased ventilator need in the state. In addition, Arizona is exploring the purchase of additional ventilators to build more capacity for critical care patients.


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Contact reporter Patty Machelor at 806-7754 or pmachelor@tucson.com