Nurses in protective gear stood at the entrance of the Phoenix VA hospital Thursday afternoon, directing everyone to wash their hands in portable sinks set up under a small canopy.

It’s part of a new screening protocol requiring everyone who enters the hospital to wash their hands and answer questions on whether they are experiencing symptoms and if they’ve had contact with someone confirmed to have the new coronavirus.

"We have not had any positive cases. We have tested some folks based on a clinical assessment ... but at this point we have seen no positive cases," Cindy Dorfner, a spokeswoman for the Phoenix VA Health Care System, told The Arizona Republic on Thursday afternoon.

Anyone who answers yes to either question during screening stays at the entrance, talks to a clinical staff member, and likely is sent home and told to contact the Maricopa County Department of Public Health, although if someone has a severe illness they can be treated in the hospital's emergency department.

"We have space. So if someone has pneumonia and they need to be admitted, we can admit them at this point," Dorfner said.

Hospital sets up tent for extra space, not in use yet

On Saturday, people set up a medical tent on the east side of the hospital’s property, visible from Seventh Street and Indian School Road. The Base-X shelter, which are commonly used for military and emergency medical response, holds 16 hospital beds but is not currently in use.

"We set it up on Saturday to kind of test the process of setting it up, test the medical components of the system, and we’re leaving it up in case we have a surge," Dorfner said. "It’s a fully functional medical tent. So I mean we’re not gonna be doing surgeries in there but if people come through we’ll be able to maximize that space to take care of folks."

She said there are no plans to set up other tents at the hospital.

Hospital bans visitors, rescheduling appointments

"We are converting our elective and routine appointments cause we’re just trying to keep the foot traffic down," Dorfner said. Such appointments are being moved to telemedicine calls and, if that is not possible, rescheduled to a later date, she said.

Starting in 2013, the Phoenix VA was at the epicenter of a scandal on wait times, with local veterans waiting months to get appointments and some dying during the wait.

Starting Sunday, the hospital banned all visitors in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

"We are not allowing visitors at all to our inpatients except for compassionate cases. For an end-of-life situation, where if someone is close to the end of their life, we will make exceptions, but that is done on a case-by-case basis," she said. Even then, no one under 15 is allowed.

"We have a very vulnerable population of patients so in a lot of cases some of them are older, some of them comorbidities that make them more susceptible to illness so we’re trying to protect the staff as well as the veterans," Dorfner said.

Additionally, the Phoenix VA Regional Office closed to the public starting on Thursday.

VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said on Wednesday that the department is ready for the virus and that nationally the VA has tested several hundred veterans and 44 have tested positive for the new coronavirus.

Dorfner said that other VA locations across the country are seeing their enrollment dwindle, but the Phoenix system grows by about 325 veterans per week and as such could become overwhelmed.

"We have almost 100,000 unique veterans that we serve but we have about 130,000 enrolled in our system so at any time, depending on what happens in the world ... we could bump up to that 130,000 and we’re already busting at the seams," Dorfner said.

"At this point we don’t know what to expect. We’re preparing as if we’re going to get an influx of positive cases of coronavirus and I think if we do that then we won’t be surprised by anything."

Reach Kaila White at Kaila.White@arizonarepublic.com or on Twitter @kailawhite.