Last week McCormick Place starated getting their first patients (via Chicago Tribune):
McCormick Place got its first COVID-19 patients this week as health care professionals begin trying out the hastily built medical center.
Patients started arriving Tuesday afternoon, and five were there Friday, officials said.
“They are all people who have a low-acuity COVID-19,” said Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who noted that the pop-up hospital was not designed to treat the sickest patients. “They will be there for as long as it will take for them to recover.”
Mayor Lori Lightfoot said conversations are underway with area hospitals about bringing additional patients. The medical center at McCormick Place, where the first 500 beds were unveiled last week, is designed as a “safety valve” for stressed hospitals, the mayor said Friday after touring the facility with the governor and U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth.
Patients at McCormick are only being admitted directly from local hospitals, and they are not allowed to have visitors, city officials said.
Preventing hospitals from becoming overwhelmed is the goal of the governor’s stay-at-home order that aims to slow the spread of the disease. But officials were setting up extra beds at McCormick Place and shuttered hospitals in case the hospitals nevertheless become overburdened.
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