Around this time of year, the Lord Baltimore Hotel usually would be filled with guests: convention visitors, football fans and even ghost hunters seeking to commune with the spirits that some say haunt its corridors.

Today, the hotel’s ballroom has been converted into a COVID-19 command center. Beneath three grand chandeliers, city employees and workers from the University of Maryland Medical System take calls from coronavirus-positive residents who need a place to quarantine or health care facilities with patients, some of them homeless, who need a place to stay.