From muck and shovels to life on Mars – how building technology has evolved over 150 years constructionnews.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from constructionnews.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
4 Apr 2021
Emergency field hospitals established across the country by the British government at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds are being stood down and decommissioned, in many cases without having treated a single patient for coronavirus.
12 so-called ‘Nightingale’ hospitals named for a famed 19th-century British nurse who revolutionised healthcare practices were established across the United Kingdom in 2020, part of a plan to see the nation prepared for a sudden surge in critical coronavirus cases. Built inside sports stadia, convention centers, and former retail premises, the sites provided thousands of extra beds.
Now more of the Nightingale hospitals are being shut down without having seen a single patient. The 500-bed Yorkshire Nightingale has now been stood down, the BBC reports, and like some others, it has not treated a single Coronavirus patient since it was opened in April 2020.
Birmingham s 2,000-bed Nightingale hospital, built at a cost of £66million, is set to close without ever having treated a single patient.
The facility was commissioned by the NHS at the height of the first wave of the pandemic to deal with an expected surge in Covid patients.
More than 400 workers, supported by 60 Ghurkhas from the British Army, built the 70,000-square-metre facility from scratch in just two weeks before it was officially opened by Prince William.
But in the past 12 months since it was completed not a single person has been treated at the NEC s temporary hospital and it will shut down for good next month as coronavirus infection rates plummet.