WHEELING, W.Va. — A decision is looming on whether the site of the former Ohio Valley Medical Center in Wheeling can be used to become an emergency COVID-19 care center.
Officials with the City of Wheeling and the US Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) toured the facility on Monday and Mayor Glenn Elliott told MetroNews that word should come out later this week.
He believed the city has done a great job with social distancing but they must plan for the worst-case scenario with this ‘regional overflow plan.’
“As someone who has spent the last few years in office trying to get more people walking the streets in Wheeling, it does break your heart to see this. But we know what we have to do in the short term to beat this virus,” Elliott said.
Ohio Valley Medical Center (OVMC), the six-story hospital in downtown Wheeling, closed its doors in September, putting hundreds of employees out of work.
According to Elliott, ACE has set out across the country to look at options in case of hospital overflow. Specifically for OVMC, Elliott said it could hold patients from the Upper Ohio Valley, Pittsburgh and even Columbus areas.
Nine ACE officials looked through the electrical engineering, networking, and HVAC system at OVMC, Elliott said. He believed that ACE officials were impressed by the facility that showed “no fatal flaws.”
Elliott further said that if it got to the point of usage, the West Virginia National Guard and state Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) would be among the folks to staff it. ACE officials would be looking for people to live there while treating COVID-19 patients.
“One thing they were looking during the site walkthrough is additional rooms where doctors, first responders and staffers working there could stay there around the clock so they wouldn’t be going from within the hospital, out into the community and then back each day,” Elliott said.
The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Ohio County sits at 10, according to the latest numbers from the DHHR on Tuesday afternoon.
The county currently has two testing sites, at Wheeling Hospital and a drive-through in the Wheeling Park parking lot ran by Wheeling Hospital. Around 40 percent of Wheeling Hospital’s patients come from the state of Ohio, officials previously told MetroNews.
Wheeling Hospital CEO Douglass Harrison has expressed frustration with the City of Wheeling’s plan with OVMC. He told The Intelligencer newspaper in Wheeling that the regional backup plan is not necessary and officials have not even spoken with regional hospitals that are already open. MetroNews could not reach him for comment.
Most hospitals in the area fall under the WVU Medicine umbrella, including Wheeling Hospital, Sistersville General Hospital, Wetzel County Hospital, WVU Reynolds Memorial Hospital, WVU Barnesville Hospital, and Harrison Community Hospital.
Elliott told MetroNews there has been a miscommunication between the city and the hospital. He said that the city is not trying to encourage OVMC to reopen fully as a hospital but to open in case of an emergency only.
“Wheeling Hospital does a great job, it’s our city’s largest employer. We can’t imagine Wheeling right now without having that hospital there,” Elliott told MetroNews.
“My fear is if we do see the same sort of spike in COVID outbreaks as we’ve seen elsewhere, I don’t want to see Wheeling Hospital get overrun and put a big crunch on our healthcare capacity locally.”
Elliott said in the meantime for the area, they have to continue to practice the Center for Disease Control guidelines so it never gets close to that point.
“We’re going to get through this,” he said. “Wheeling is always a city that bounces back, we come together in times of crisis. This is certainly a challenge for the ages but we are certainly doing the best that we can.”