State Takes Over Elgin Overflow Hospital Thursday: Officials

ELGIN, IL —For the past couple weeks, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been tasked with turning an administrative building on the former Sherman Hospital campus in Elgin into a temporary overflow facility should the Chicago area need it. As deaths spike, with state officials saying new coronavirus deaths are peaking now in Illinois, the makeshift hospital was quickly put together to handle medical needs if nearby hospitals become overloaded with patients.

On Thursday, the facility on Center Street will be turned over to the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, which will begin management of the facility, Patrick Bray, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers chief of public affairs, told Patch. Patch has requested interviews through the Army Corps and Turner Construction, which headed the construction project, to learn more about the facility but has not yet heard back.

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It took hundreds of people working around the clock to get the facility up to speed in such a short time, CBS Chicago reported in recent weeks.

City officials have said the facility will have will have 230 to 250 beds and 24 isolation rooms for patients waiting to be transported to other hospitals, according to the Elgin Courier-News. The facility was set to reopen on April 24, police and fire officials said earlier this month.

Patch.com has reached out to city officials and is waiting to hear back regarding the official opening date for this facility.

The once-shuttered medical facility is on the campus of the former Sherman Hospital, which was torn down in recent years. That hospital once served as the backdrop for Contagion, a 2011 hit movie based on a pandemic.

• Illinois Coronavirus Update April 23: 35,108 Cases; 1,565 Deaths

On March 30, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced the former Sherman Hospital campus at Slade Avenue and Center Street was among several facilities that had been pegged by state officials to be used to care for overflow patients from suburban hospitals that could become overloaded with new coronavirus patients. The medical building will be used to treat non-acute patients, according to a news release from the city of Elgin.

Scenes from "Contagion," a medical thriller released in 2011 that eerily echoes today's reality, were shot at the former Elgin hospital. The film starred Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne and Jude Law, depicting a pandemic that swept the world as government officials rushed to find a cure.

City officials said earlier this month that they weren't sure if COVID-19 patients will be treated at the Elgin facility, since the Illinois Department of Public Health has not yet made that determination.

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