London's Nightingale Hospital being 'wound down' due to so few coronavirus patients
LONDON'S NHS Nightingale Hospital is now being "wound down" because no new coronavirus patients have been admitted for the last week, reports claim.
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Decisions on the future of the field hospital will be made within days. Approximately 200 staff were gathered in the boulevard area of the ExCel conference centre in east London on Friday afternoon, where chief operating officer Natalie Forrest explained the challenges facing the hospital. She told staff discussions had started on the future of the hospital and that a final decision would come “sooner rather than later” within the next week.
One source close to the operation of the Nightingale hospital told the Independent newspaper: “As an initial idea, the Nightingale made a great deal of sense.
"The rationale for that is receding quite rapidly.
"We are having to think about what to do next.
“There are still patients and staff are still caring for patients but there have been no admissions in the past week
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"The numbers are going down.”
The hospital was designed to include almost 4,000 beds.
The field hospital, built in just 10 days at the start of April, had only 19 patients on Friday, down from a peak of around 35 earlier in the month.
London hospitals are increasingly choosing to keep patients in their own intensive care units.
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One NHS source who works at the Hospital said they were no longer needed on Friday due to the small numbers of patients.
The situation has been replicated across the country were none of the other Nightingale hospitals in Birmingham, Manchester or Harrogate have patients.
Questions are being asked about whether it is sustainable to keep the Nightingale hospital in London open.
Many other hospitals in the capital have space as part of the emergency capacity created to cope with a COVID-19 surge that never fully materialised.
While that has been praised by most NHS leaders, many are now asking why the Nightingale has not been closed and staff recycled back into hospitals that are still working at emergency levels.
It is thought the field hospital may be either repurposed for use as a step-down facility for recovering patients.
Another possibility is that the hospital could be mothballed but retained for any potential second waves of infection after the UK’s lockdown is lifted.