A hospital in Mississauga is the second in Ontario to open a field unit to respond to an expected influx of COVID-19 patients.

Mississauga Hospital, part of Trillium Health Services, began construction on a “Pandemic Response Unit” earlier this week.

The white shell of the tent-like structure was added on Wednesday.

Trillium president Michelle DiEmanuele said a final decision has yet to be made on the kind of patients to be housed in the makeshift hospital, which has room for about 90 beds.

“It is highly likely it will be non-COVID (patients), but we haven’t made that determination yet,” she said in a phone interview.

The unit could be used for post-acute patients, including those in need of complex continuing care and rehabilitation, she said.

“We are still finalizing that. The great thing about this particular solution is it offers up great optionality around how we can look at patient populations.”

DiEmanuele said it’s possible to change how the modular unit is used as the pandemic progresses and pressures on the hospital change.

For example, it could go from being a post-acute unit to an acute unit, serving sicker patients, she said.

“And then the next determination would be whether it should be for COVID or non-COVID patients,” she continued.

Some health-care workers in Italy, where the virus has hobbled the health-care system, have said it is a mistake to admit COVID-19 patients to hospitals where they can infect others.

Asked about that, DiEmanuele said: “I would say that we are learning from the world every single day, whether it is Italy or New York … We are always looking at what the global trends and learnings have been, and we have been applying them.”

At noon on Wednesday there were 51 patients with the virus admitted at Trillium, 21 of them in critical care. The patients were split between two of Trillium’s three campuses: Mississauga and Credit Valley hospitals.

DiEmanuele said patients with the virus have been carefully segregated from patients who do not have it.

Trillium has the ability to erect two more field hospitals if need be, a news release from the organization said. It is preparing for the possibility of making a total of about 1,000 extra beds available.

The field unit that is going up measures 8,250 square feet, occupying much of the south parking lot at the Mississauga Hospital.

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It is expected to be outfitted with supplies and equipment by the end of April, according to the news release.

It is being designed and built by BLT Construction Services, the same company that began work last month on a field unit at Joseph Brant Hospital in Burlington.

Trillium last month closed an outpatient urgent care centre at its third site — Queensway Health Centre in Etobicoke — so that it could use the space for its pandemic response.

Field hospitals have been popping up in jurisdictions around the world that have been ravaged by the pandemic.

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has advised all cities and towns in the United States to “rapidly begin” work to create and staff field hospitals, referring to them as “alternative care facilities.”

“Time is of the essence, because constructing and outfitting a facility cannot happen overnight,” said an article on the website of the Johns Hopkins University’s Centre for Health Security.

The article stated that the field hospitals can serve a number of functions, including:

Patient isolation and alternatives to home care for COVID-19-infected patients

Quarantine of contacts of confirmed cases

Primary triage and rapid patient screening

Limited supportive care for noncritical infected patients

Expanded ambulatory care

Care for recovering, noninfected patients

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