Hospital Plans for Bioterror Outbreak

It’s a sign of the times, this tan, 60-foot-long trailer set up in the parking lot, yards from the emergency room entrance at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura.

If there is ever any threat of smallpox or of a bioterrorism outbreak in the area, anyone seeking treatment will be routed through the trailer, rather than being allowed to walk into the hospital and put others at risk for infection.

“The whole object is to have a mechanism by which people can be protected,” said Michael Bakst, the hospital’s executive director. “The trailer becomes the safety valve by which people can be let into the hospital.

“Hopefully,” he added, “it will never be used.”

The trailer arrived a few days ago, and still needs electricity, air filters, equipment and one of two sets of stairs to lead patients up from the parking lot into the triage and waiting area. It has three small examination rooms.

Hospital officials said the trailer should be in order by mid-January, but added that it will not be opened unless an outbreak is suspected.

Meanwhile, on the hospital’s seventh floor, an isolation room is being set up to hold as many as six patients. If a patient screened in the trailer needs to be admitted, staff members have established a protocol for dressing themselves and the patient in protective gear, and then escorting the person to the isolation room.

Cary Savitch, an infectious disease specialist at Community Memorial, said the hospital’s plan has limitations but is on the right track.

“There would probably never be one or two cases of smallpox,” Savitch said. “If there were any cases in Ventura County, there would probably be thousands infected at the same time. And you can’t put thousands in a trailer.

“But it’s the right direction and the only option the hospital has until the county sets aside a hotel or an abandoned building or something that would hold many people with smallpox in case of an emergency.”

Ken Strople, the hospital’s associate executive director, said the trailer is the first of its kind in the county. It will hold about $60,000 of equipment, he said, and will remain in place for at least six months. After that, the hospital will reevaluate its bioterrorism plan.

In the meantime, Strople said, county public health officials are scouting locations where a large number of patients could be housed in the event of an outbreak.