Samaritan’s Purse sends 50-plus bed emergency field hospital to California for COVID-19 care support

LOS ANGELES COUNTY, Calif. (WBTV) - Samaritan’s Purse has sent a 50-plus bed emergency field hospital to California to provide COVID-19 care support.

The organization airlifted the hospital to Los Angeles County at the request of Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster, California.

The county has seen a staggering surge in COVID-19 cases, with local officials reporting that a person dies from the coronavirus there every eight minutes.

More than 12,000 area residents have died from the virus since the start of the pandemic.

“Here in Lancaster, at Antelope Valley Hospital, the rooms and the wards are completely overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients,” said Edward Graham, who is on the ground there helping to set up the Emergency Field Hospital. “The doctors and nurses themselves can’t get a reprieve. There’s no break, they don’t see the end of this, and they’ve asked for help—along with the community leaders, the mayor, and the church leadership here.”

The 50-plus bed facility, equipped as a respiratory care unit, will be staffed by a Samaritan’s Purse DART (disaster assistance response team) that includes doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals.

Officials say the unit is similar to the one we opened on Jan. 7 in western North Carolina, making this the fifth emergency field hospital that Samaritan’s Purse has deployed in response to the coronavirus.