{"id":206714,"date":"2020-05-05T07:01:23","date_gmt":"2020-05-05T07:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=206714"},"modified":"2020-05-08T07:04:40","modified_gmt":"2020-05-08T07:04:40","slug":"empty-nhs-nightingale-hospital-at-excel-centre-could-be-closed-within-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=206714","title":{"rendered":"Empty NHS Nightingale hospital at Excel centre could be closed within days"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Roberts \u2013 Metro May 4, 2020<\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Just 19 patients were treated at 4,000-bed NHS Nightingale hospital in London over Easter weekend. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

The Government\u2019s first NHS Nightingale hospital could be scrapped within days after remaining largely empty for weeks, according to a report.<\/span><\/p>\n

The temporary field hospital opened at the Excel Centre in east London on April 3 to increase the NHS\u2019s capacity for coronavirus patients.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the 4,000-bed facility is facing closure after just 51 patients were reportedly treated in the first three weeks, the Daily Mail reports.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a leaked internal email, seen by the paper, staff were told the hospital is accepting patients \u2018in theory\u2019 but that ministers will consider abandoning the site this week.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018One possible outcome is for this site to be put into hibernation \u2013 ready to come out of hibernation, but not requiring staffing,\u2019 the email reportedly said. \u2018Central Government will make a decision, we hope, early [this] week.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

The Government has built five Nightingale hospitals in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol and Harrogate, but its unclear what will happen to them if they continue to received few patients.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the reports of a high number of beds lying empty, NHS England\u2019s national medical director Professor Stephen Powis said it would have been \u2018foolish\u2019 not to plan for extra capacity to tackle coronavirus.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the daily press briefing from Downing Street, he said the extra capacity provided by the Nightingale hospitals may still be needed.<\/span><\/p>\n

When asked if the hospitals were built in error, Prof Powis said: \u2018Absolutely 100% not.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018If you wind the clock back a month or two, we were looking at an increase in the number of cases, infections, in the UK.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018We were watching images from around the world of health systems that were overwhelmed and we had not put in place, were about to put in place, a series of social distancing measures not absolutely knowing how the public would respond to that.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018And it would have been foolish to have not planned for extra capacity within the NHS. We did that in a number of ways including the Nightingales.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Prof Powis continued: \u2018The fact that we have not needed to use all that capacity is actually good news because it means that the public have complied with the social distancing measures, they\u2019ve started to flatten that curve and we\u2019ve seen fewer admissions and ultimately fewer deaths than we might have seen if this virus had just been left to spread unchecked.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018And the very early worst case scenarios that no country has let play out would have meant many, many, many deaths and an awful lot of pressure on health services.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018So I think you would have been a hundred, a thousand times more critical if the NHS had not put in that extra capacity and had become overwhelmed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018You would be quite rightly asking us why we had not gone every mile that we could possibly go to, to put in that extra capacity.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

He concluded: \u2018So the Nightingales were not built in error and we may still need them.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018We are not through this yet and although government policy and the scientific advice is to try and ensure that the virus does not start to spread widely again, we can never absolutely be certain.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018And therefore for the months ahead, we need to maintain that extra capacity until we have more certainty.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 4,000-bed facility could be mothballed after it admitted just 51 patients in the first three weeks since it opened <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":205698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=206714"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206716,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206714\/revisions\/206716"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/205698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=206714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=206714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=206714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}