MIT Converts Ice Rink To Coronavirus Care Center

Cambridge now has another 75 beds to care for COVID-19 patients, with the opening of a new Massachusetts Institute of Technology dedicated health center.

The Sean Collier Care Center, named for an MIT police officer who was killed in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, will care for patients who have tested positive for the virus but do not require intensive care. The building, located on the school's campus, normally houses the Johnson Ice Rink.

“We are proud to help our neighbors in Cambridge by creating the Sean Collier Care Center,” MIT Medical Director Cecilia Stuopis said in a statement. “With this facility, we hope to do our part to ease some of the strain that our fellow health care facilities are feeling at this time.”

Patients will be referred to the center from Mount Auburn Hospital and other local ambulatory care centers, according to MIT.

MIT Medical Director Cecilia Stuopis expected the first patients Friday.

She said the clinic will be able to handle two kinds of patients including COVID-positive MIT students.

"For that group, we think that would be maybe someone who is earlier maybe in the stage of the illness, but still with milder type symptoms, and then the other end of the spectrum is the person who has maybe been hospitalized for a while, isn't quite ready to go home, but maybe doesn't need that higher level of care either," Stuopis said.

That second group of patients would come from Cambridge hospitals. Stuopis expected patients will need several days, but no longer, at the clinic.

MIT also has volunteered several dorms for Cambridge first responders working long shifts who don't want to go home or need to isolate.