New York’s premier public hospital will become a center for treatment of the Ebola virus in the city, hospital and city officials said on Tuesday, amid widespread concerns that the disease may not be so easily contained by every hospital that has an isolation unit.

Bellevue Hospital Center, the country’s oldest public hospital, would receive any confirmed Ebola cases within the 11-member public hospital system, a Bellevue spokesman said. It would also be available to receive transfers from private hospitals in the city.

City health officials said that the decision to transfer patients would be made by hospital officials in consultation with the health department case by case, and that not all patients would necessarily be transferred: A patient could, for instance, prefer to stay in a local hospital.