SLO County alternate care site at Cal Poly close to being operational

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. -- San Luis Obispo County's Alternate Care Site inside the Cal Poly Recreation Center is nearly ready to be operational.

On Monday, the county led local government officials and media members on a tour of the building.

Work started last Monday and has been going non-stop over the past seven days.

"The county county assigned us a mission to get this done and delivered by 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning April, and we’re going to meet that mission," said Tenet Health Central Coast CEO Mark Lisa, who is helping manage the construction.

The temporary medical facility is officially known as the Government Authorized Alternate Care Site (GAACS) and will not be a "field hospital."

"This is designed to be a large subacute facility, to take the load off of our acute hospitals in the county, and take care of patients that, while they are positive for COVID-19, they are no longer sick enough to be in the hospital, or not yet sick enough to be in the hospital, but too sick to be home," said Lisa.

The site is being planned for a potential seven phases. The first phase is essentially complete and will hold 165 beds.

"We wanted to design and learn as we go," said Lisa. "We wanted to get phase one set up, get oxygen plumbed in, get the electrical hung. Phase two is going to emulate this, only total plumbed in oxygen for that phase. This is 165 beds the next one is 130-plus, and then there’s other phases that build on that, so seven phase total with over 900 beds at its peak capacity," said Lisa.

Lisa stressed the Recreation Center is perfectly tailor made for this type of operation.

"It’s got a lot of rooms," said Lisa. "Big wide open spaces several gyms, including lot of shower rooms, utilities, laundry facilities, food service, there’s WiFi."

The price tag is currently estimated to be $7.9 million.

"The county is funding this right now," said SLO County 4th District Supervisor Lynn Compton. "We have two different funds that we will fund this through. We have reserves and contingencies, so we will be looking to those. We’ve been pretty prudent in the past and saving money and putting money aside for never expecting this, but for other things, and then we will seek reimbursement from the state and the federal government, which should reimburse at about the 95 percent level, so we’re keeping all the receipts and everything to move forward with that."

Under a best case scenario, the site will never see a patient, but if it does, the county and medical leaders believe the money will be well spent.

"The county is ready," said Lisa. "It's all about preparedness. Based on the epidemiological models and the planning by the county health department, they said we need to be ready. We don’t know if we’re going to have patients in here at all. We have a strong believe that the likelihood is going to be there, but we wanted to be ready and we didn’t have to scramble at the last minute because there’s a lot of professionals that are available right now to do this, and that’s what you got what you see here."

The alternate care site will only be able to operate with staffing provided by the medical reserve corps the county is currently recruiting.

The county said it has about 230 volunteers vetted and ready to work at the site.

However, many more are still needed.

If the site was to expand to its full capacity of 900 patients, approximately 600 reserve corps volunteers would be needed.

"Please we need your help to be successful," said Compton. "I’m so amazed at how people have stepped forward. This community is an amazing community and we’re going get through this."

For more information about the medical reserve corps or about general SLO County COVID-19 response efforts and programs, visit ReadySLO.org.