Gov. Phil Murphy and Sen. Bob Menendez on Thursday toured the state's first pop-up field hospital, constructed at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus to help manage a surge in coronavirus patients at North Jersey hospitals. 

The 250-bed hospital, the first of four planned for New Jersey at three sites, is intended as a “step-down” facility that would take patients from area acute care hospitals to make room in those hospitals for coronavirus patients during the expected surge in cases. 

The field hospital should be ready to take patients starting Monday, according to Col. Patrick Callahan, superintendent of the State Police.

Murphy called it an “extraordinary effort” to build the hospital. His visit came the same day New Jersey recorded 182 new virus-related deaths, the highest one-day spike yet, bringing total deaths to 537 in less than a month.

“Of course, this is only the end of the beginning as opposed to the beginning of the end,” Murphy said to a room of workers. “God bless you all and thank you for everything you’ve done to get this going.” 

Rows of one-bed units are set up in blocks inside the exposition center. The beds look similar to Army cots, each with a white curtain for privacy. Workers also outfitted the center with a temporary pharmacy, as well as showers, sinks, toilets, a nurse’s station and a break room for health care workers. 

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers worked with the State Police to build the hospital over the past week, Callahan said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Guard and health officials also worked on the hospital to ensure it met federal specifications. 

Major Gen. Jeffrey Milhorn, Commanding General of the Army Corps of Engineers’ North Atlantic Division, gave much of the credit for the build-out of the hospital to state troopers. 

“We’re just enablers,” Milhorn said. “We want to enable you to move fastest by providing the ICU capability and acute care in the existing hospital footprints.” 

Menendez led the effort to get the hospital as well as three others under construction, two in Edison at the New Jersey Convention and Exposition Center and one at the Atlantic City Convention Center. Those should open in the next two weeks, according to Callahan. 

"We’re hopefully going to save lives," Menendez told the workers. 

State Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said during a briefing Thursday that although the field hospital is not intended for COVID-19 patients, it may be used to treat patients in the final day or two of their treatment of the disease. 

Persichilli had expected a surge to hit New Jersey hospitals around the middle of April. But overcrowding led seven hospitals in North Jersey to divert patients Tuesday night, she said. One of those hospitals had 80 people waiting for beds, she said. 

New Jersey reported Thursday the total number of positive coronavirus cases statewide has reached 25,590 and deaths have climbed to 537. New Jersey has the second highest number of virus cases in the United States, behind New York.

North Jersey hospitals had more than 1,000 COVID-19 patients as of late Wednesday afternoon: 400 at Hackensack University Medical Center, nearly 200 each at Englewood Health and The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, more than 150 at Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck, and 114 at St. Joseph’s Health’s two campuses in Paterson and Wayne. 

Information from Bergen New Bridge Medical Center in Paramus, Hackensack Meridian Health Pascack Valley Medical Center in Westwood and St. Mary’s General Hospital in Passaic was not immediately available.