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Coronavirus: Event cancellations have stage builders creating temporary medical facilities

With the entire country at a government-instituted standstill, annual events like South by Southwest and Coachella will not be happening.

That has left the support systems needed to put on massive events out of a job.

Ryan Choura’s business, Choura Events, is one company responsible for erecting tents and other facilities for music, sports and other events across the nation, The Los Angeles Times reported.

The outlook looked bleak with 200 workers without events to prepare for, but then Choura realized the company could switch gears and help construct the temporary facilities needed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Choura Events is now putting up triage tents and overflow facilities that doctors say they’ll need once more people get sick with the coronavirus. So far they have put up four facilities, the LA Times reported.

The company is building structures that have hard walls with floors and windows, The Press Telegram reported.

Choura is not just focusing on full medical facilities, he told the Press Telegram the company is looking at building drive-by testing facilities.

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Other groups are also adapting their concert business to the medical field.

Joey Gallagher of Gallagher Staging was supposed to build the main stage for Coachella. Now the company is building tents that will hold patients in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, the LA Times reported.

Gallagher told the LA Times, “We can build a small city in a day or two, and that’s a need right now.”

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That city can include Wi-Fi, radios, generators, lighting, restrooms and wash stations, Gallagher said.

Another company, Upstaging, has been using its metal shop to make face shields for medical workers. The company is also making and moving signs and room dividers for nursing homes, prisons and hospitals.

While the West Coast is using event companies to build temporary medical facilities, at New York’s Javits Convention Center, the Army Corps of Engineers built a nearly 3,000-bed medical facility. It joins two other Army field hospitals and the Navy’s hospital ship the USNS Comfort that are expected to be needed as the coronavirus continues to spread, ABC News reported.

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Last week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo praised the work done by the military.

The Javits Center will be staffed by 350 Federal Emergency Management Agency medical personnel and 600 military medical personnel to handle patients who do not have COVID-19, allowing the standard hospitals to treat coronavirus patients, ABC News reported.