Lee Memorial Hospital sets up tents for potential COVID-19 patients

Reporter: Sara Girard
Published: Updated:

Tents are going up outside Lee Memorial Hospital in Fort Myers Tuesday afternoon.

Lee Health is setting up two air-conditioned tents with filtration and a generator.

The first is a larger tent is where emergency personnel will screen every potential patient at the hospital – not including those who arrive by helicopter or EMS

If you show up with flu-like upper respiratory symptoms, you’ll be separated into a smaller tent away from other patients to wait to be seen.

We spoke with emergency management coordinator Greg Fisher who says this is all part of following the CDC’s guidelines.

“What it does is it relieves a lot of pressure on trying to maintain the security inside the ER, and it helps to keep the patient safe. So we’re not creating exposure opportunities,” Fisher said. “And so what that does is it creates a physical barrier from the hospital and then you’ll see this also, a similar concept, roll out at other hospitals as well.”

The hospital expects this mobile triage to be fully operational by the end of the week and plan to expand to other emergency departments.

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