Bright yellow tents were placed outside the Queen’s Medical Center’s emergency room area on Thursday morning.

Doctors at the hospital said it’s due to a Centers for Disease Control request to keep possible coronavirus patients away from people who do not have the virus.

“The COVID testing guidelines by the CDC are changing daily,” explained Queen’s emergency medicine physician Dr. Daniel Cheng. “One of the key guidelines we want to be in compliance with is the CDC is recommending that we definitely make sure we are separating individuals who may be infected with the Coronavirus from otherwise non-affected but sick people coming into the emergency room.”

He said the new triage tents help protect emergency room patients entering the hospital and also helps minimize the spread.

“As the major hospital for the Pacific Rim and Hawaii, we just want to be prepared,” Dr. Cheng said.

Dr. Cheng said doctors would see and evaluate patients coming in with COVID-19 who are “low acuities.”



“That’s very important. These are only meant for people who are the walking-well, maybe they have a little sniffling nose, they’re young, they’re healthy but they’re worried or concerned and they want to talk to a provider, and they want to possibly get tested,” Dr. Cheng explained. “They don’t need an IV, they don’t need aggressive medical treatment.”

As for how it works he said a patient would come to the emergency room entrance area, be evaluated by a nurse, and if he or she is medium or high risk for the virus, they would be triaged.

He said the two tents are well ventilated and patients will have about six feet of space.

“Our goal is to get patients and people who are concerned in and out within 30 minutes,” Dr. Cheng said.

“We’re taking this 100% seriously, this is probably going to be one of the biggest health care events of our lifetime,” he said.

Dr. Cheng said the tents will remain up indefinitely.

“We already have been pretty close to capacity being very busy with the flu so at this point we feel this is a good viable option to be able to deal with the surge of patients that will be concerned,” he said.