Costa Rica on Saturday received a field hospital loaned by Panama to help improve the nation’s Covid-19 treatment capacity.

The unit will be installed in the northern parking lot at the San Vicente de Paúl Hospital in Heredia. Seventy-six patients with Covid-19 were hospitalized there as of Friday.

The Mobile Medical Unit will add 40 beds to the Heredia Hospital’s capacity. It will feature five rooms, electric and water supply plants, and lavatories, among other amenities.

“They are highly versatile mobile hospitals, and their design allows them to be used as a single unit or by separate segments, which has given us the possibility of maintaining active deployments in eight different points of the country,” the Costa Rican Social Security System says.

The CCSS has installed similar Mobile Medical Units at the following hospitals: San Juan de Dios Hospital, La Anexión Hospital in Nicoya, Monseñor Sanabria Hospital in Puntarenas, Guápiles Hospital and Dr. Tony Facio Castro Hospital in Limón.

At Heredia Hospital, the Mobile Medical Unit will be used for pediatric non-Covid emergency care and Covid-19 vaccinations. That will allow more beds to be reserved for Covid-19 patients within the fixed hospital buildings.

As of Friday, the latest available data, there were 1,417 people hospitalized with Covid-19 in Costa Rica. Of those, 527 were in intensive care.

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