Medical shelter being built at NRG Park for emergency coronavirus use

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Harris County is building emergency medical shelters at NRG Stadium that would be used if local hospitals get overrun with coronavirus patients.

Commissioners have seen what has happened in other areas when hospitals get overrun, so Tuesday they authorized up to $60 million to build emergency medical shelters. Workers at NRG have already begun construction.

Video above shows shelters being built in the orange parking lot at NRG Stadium.

There will be three modules, and each one can hold 250 people.

The county is building the facilities before they are needed, and actually hope they will never need to be used.

They're hoping local hospitals will not be overrun and hope there is enough capacity to treat everyone who might get sick with the coronavirus.

"The construction will start right now in the parking lot of NRG. We, right now, can't build it indoors because, of course, we're still cleaning up from the rodeo," Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said. "That would be a dangerous situation for anybody with respiratory illness to be around all those materials that are necessary for the rodeo, so it's been done sort of outside."

County officials hope the federal government will eventually reimburse them for the project.

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