LONDON’S Nightingale Hospital has been stripped bare despite soaring coronavirus cases and medics facing a “staggering” number of patients.
Covid hospital admissions in England rocketed past the April peak today, but the facility in east London is deserted.
Nearly 5,000 coronavirus patients are currently being treated in hospitals in London and health bosses are being urged to open the site and start treating patients.
The Nightingale Hospital in London is one of seven sites built at the start of the pandemic at a cost of £220million, but it was shut and placed on standby soon after.
The number of people being treated for the killer bug in hospitals in England is now 20,426, compared to 18,974 patients recorded on April 12.
And the latest figures from NHS England, published today, show hospitals in London currently have the highest number of coronavirus patients.
There are currently 4,957 hospital beds occupied by Covid patients in the capital.
But pictures show the largest of the Nightingales at the ExCel centre without staff, equipment and the 4,000 beds it has room for.
The ExCeL centre says 90 per cent of the building has returned to how it was.
Infection rates in England are currently highest in areas of Essex, London and other parts of the South East.
Paramedics in the capital are receiving up to 8,000 999 calls each day.
London Ambulance Service described Boxing Day as one its “busiest ever days”, with 7,918 callouts – up more than 2,500 on the 5,217 received on the same day last year.
Doctors have said the NHS is facing a “bleak” situation, and that the new mutant strain could lead to them being “overwhelmed”.
Martin Llewelyn, a professor of infectious diseases and NHS consultant, described the number of coronavirus patients in hospital as “staggering”.
“Back on the wards today. Staggering amount of Covid,” he wrote on Twitter.
“Striking difference from last time – large family outbreaks with teenagers/young adults the focus.
“Multiple family members being admitted. Not looking forward to next two weeks. Please follow the rules this New Year’s Eve.”
Hospitals in the south of England are facing a rise in pressure due to the increasing number of coronavirus patients.
Dr Nick Scriven, of the Society for Acute Medicine, called the trend “extremely worrying” and said “systems will again be stretched to the limit”.
“It is not ‘just the case’ of using the Nightingale hospital as there are simply no staff for them to run as they were originally intended (mini intensive care units),” he said.
“They could play a role perhaps if used as rehabilitation units for those recovering but, again, where do we find the specialist staff – the NHS simply does not have the capacity to spare anyone.”
‘WALL-TO-WALL COVID’
Dr Katherine Henderson, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, begged Brits not to gather for New Year’s Eve celebrations.
She told BBC Breakfast: “Please, don’t take a chance on this, please don’t make it likely that we have an additional surge [on New Year’s Eve].
“Don’t mix, wear masks, wash your hands, keep separate — all the things we know we really need people to take very, very seriously.”
She described her experience in hospital on Christmas Day as “wall-to-wall Covid”.
“The chances are that we will cope but we cope at a cost – the cost is not doing what we had hoped, which is being able to keep non-Covid activities going,” she said.
“So we will stretch staff, the problem is at the moment we have a lot of staff sickness.”
Dr Henderson said emergency departments were “struggling” to cope with demand.
She told the Telegraph: “If you can get a grip on community transmission and suppress the virus then you can start doing other things.
“But you cannot have the operating theatre open when you are in the soup of Covid – it is dangerous. You don’t have the beds that you need and you don’t have the staff that you need.”
It comes after a record 41,385 coronavirus cases were recorded in the past 24 hours.
The number of people who have now died from the killer bug also rose by 357, taking the total number of fatalities to 71,109.
Last Monday, 33,363 people tested positive for coronavirus.
Overall, a total of 2,329,730 have now tested positive for coronavirus in the UK.
Dr Yvonne Doyle, Public Health England medical director, said: “This very high level of infection is of growing concern at a time when our hospitals are at their most vulnerable, with new admissions rising in many regions.”
She added: “Despite unprecedented levels of infection, there is hope on the horizon.”
As infection rates soar, Richard Tice, chairman of Brexit party Reform UK, visited the Nightingale Hospital site in London and phoned health officials trying in vain to find out why it was empty.
He said: “The removal of the hospital is so complete that you wouldn’t know it had ever existed.
“Hundreds of millions of pounds spent on the Nightingale hospitals has been wasted as they’ve been dismantled.”
The Nightingale at Birmingham’s NEC is empty, too. It and Sunderland’s are also on standby.
Trending In The News’s Dr Carol Cooper said a shortage of staff meant the Nightingales had no chance of ever hitting capacity.
NHS England said while three were on standby, Manchester was open for “non-Covid care”, Exeter and Harrogate as “specialist diagnostics centres”, and Bristol for “local NHS services”.
