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The Nightingale Hospital London masterpiece will close next week after treating a small number of patients, but will remain “in hibernation” in the event of a second wave of Covid-19 infections.
No more patients will be admitted to the center, which was created amidst many cheers in just 10 days, and the 12 patients currently being treated there are now being transferred to other London hospitals.
The Nightingale, built at the ExCel conference center in London’s Docklands area, has been shown to exceed the requirements in the fight against coronavirus because hospitals established in the capital coped much better with the influx of critically ill patients after expanding enormously their intensive care units.
It will close on May 15. Doctors, nurses and other staff working there received news on Monday morning. They will return to their usual hospitals this week and next.
Originally planned to have 4,000 beds, the nightingale has treated only 54 patients since it was opened by Prince Charles on April 3 and received its first patient on April 7. He has not admitted a new patient for a week, as London hospitals have had available capacity in their own intensive care units.
The other four nightingales that opened to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed, in Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Harrogate, will also be liquidated, although the London hospital will close first. They were all conceived in March, when ministers and heads of health services were concerned that NHS hospitals were at risk of being overwhelmed by the large numbers of people who needed ventilation to keep them alive as Italy faced in that moment.
But while Manchester Hospital has taken on a few patients, its sister facilities in Birmingham, Bristol and Harrogate have admitted no one.
The London nightingale in particular has been controversial. His supporters say he and the other four were built as “an insurance policy” against the pandemic, leaving hospitals unable to provide life-and-death care to people struggling to breathe due to the disease. But critics say the hospital was poorly planned and amounted to a public relations stunt. Other London hospitals were envious of the staff, equipment and priority given to a facility whose purpose, according to them, was unclear.
A staff member told The Guardian: “It was a brave attempt but it came too late, so it ended up being a white elephant. It was not a useful policy as it rejected more patients than it treated. It seems like it was more of a public relations exercise, a little war propaganda. “
More than 200 employees were on call at the London Nightingale on Monday, even though it only had 12 patients.
In a letter to staff, London Nightingale Chief Executive Charles Knight wrote: “As the Prime Minister said, we have already passed the first peak in coronavirus cases and therefore the NHS is advancing to the second phase of your response to this global pandemic. It is likely that in the next few days we will not need to admit patients to the London nightingale, while the coronavirus in the capital remains under control.
“As a result, after the latter of this, our first group of patients leaves, the hospital will be put on hold, ready to resume operations when necessary in the weeks and possibly months to come.
“This does not mean that our role in London’s response to the virus is over. We must be prepared for the possibility that the number of Covid-19 cases will increase again when the government relaxes the rules of social distancing.”
The prime minister’s spokesman confirmed that the London nightingale “would be ready to receive patients if necessary [in the future] but we don’t expect that to be the case. “
Two other planned nightingales, in Sunderland and Exeter, will still “open shortly,” he said.
