The city kept 126 beds but isn’t using them. The state has 1,125 more beds from the makeshift hospital but says the city hasn’t asked for them. And the city is missing out on $30 million from Springfield to support immigrants.
Construction workers put the finishing touches on a 500-bed temporary COVID-19 hospital at McCormick Place on April 3, 2020. It ended up going unused. | Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune pool photo
Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Gov. J.B. Pritzker stood together in April 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic to showcase the rapid transformation of an empty convention hall at McCormick Place East into a medical facility with 500 beds — and 2,500 more to be installed later.
It turned out the makeshift COVID-19 hospital wasn’t needed because existing hospitals were able, after all, to meet the demand of treating coronavirus patients. So the beds were moved to warehouses, and the facility was dismantled as quickly as it was set up.
Now, with at least 8,500 refugees from Latin America having been transported to Chicago from Texas since last August in a political tug-of-war over national immigration policy, those beds are available for use in temporary shelters.
The city kept 126 full-size beds from the McCormick Place temporary hospital. City officials say it would be difficult to set them up quickly because the beds include a mattress, headboard, footboard, bed frame and no linens.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Gov. J.B. Pritzker and U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., tour the COVID-19 care facility in Hall C at McCormick Place on April 17, 2020. Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere / Sun-Times
Instead, the Lightfoot administration chose to send cots for immigrants to sleep on at temporary shelters because they’re “easy to deploy and set up during an emergency,” according to Mary May, a spokeswoman for the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications.
“At this time, it is simply not as practical to use the limited number of beds we have in storage.”
Read more here.
Related: “McCormick Place hospital’s cost to taxpayers?” “Now-closed McCormick Place COVID-19 hospital cost taxpayers $15M to staff, run”
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