Apropos my comment on the last post "They own land! Give them money!", from The Guardian:
London NHS Nightingale hospital will shut next week
No 10 says decision is due to limited demand, with no coronavirus admissions expected in coming days
The showpiece Nightingale hospital in London will shut next week after treating a small number of patients but will be kept “in hibernation” in case a second wave of Covid-19 infections emerges.
No further patients will be admitted to the facility, which was created amid much acclaim in just 10 days, and the 12 patients being treated there at the moment are being transferred to other London hospitals...
Originally planned to have 4,000 beds, the Nightingale has treated just 54 patients since it was opened by Prince Charles on 3 April and received its first patient on 7 April. It has not admitted a new patient for a week as London hospitals have had spare capacity in their own intensive care units.
The four other Nightingales that were opened to stop hospitals being overwhelmed – in Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Harrogate – will also be wound down, though the London hospital will shut first. All were conceived in March, when ministers and health service bosses were concerned that NHS hospitals risked being overwhelmed by significant numbers of people needing to be ventilated to keep them alive, as Italy was confronting at the time.
But while the Manchester hospital has taken some patients, its sister facilities in Birmingham, Bristol and Harrogate have not admitted anyone.
Put On Your Big Boy Pants, Maybe?
3 hours ago
3 comments:
B, you didn't link to your source so I added one from the G.
You seem to have called this one right. Although, even with the benefit of hindsight, it did seem a reasonable precaution. There are about 15,000 covid patients in UK hospitals, and given the insane maths of epidemics, having another 10,000 spare beds dotted around the country is not excessive.
I'd love to know whether NHS paid full whack rent or haggled them down to current use value (precisely zero)...
I suspect the former, or possibly a reduced rent. I very much doubt the latter, or it would be being trumpeted by the relevant landlords. The fact that the NHS badges weren't free gives you some idea of what the answer might be.
Also, possibly the deals were set up while the gov't was still pursuing the "Herd Immunity" idea, in which case their "current use value" was considerably higher and the need far greater.
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