To add extra critical care capacity during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, and to treat those with COVID-19, plans were made to create further temporary hospital spaces for those in need of treatment and care. They have been named "Nightingale Hospitals", after Florence Nightingale who came to prominence for nursing soldiers during the Crimean War and is regarded as the founder of modern nursing.
Planning and construction
On 21 and 22 March, military planners and NHS England staff visited ExCeL London – an exhibition and convention centre in the Custom House area of Newham, East London – to "determine if the armed forces could support the NHS response to the outbreak". Plans to create the hospital were announced in a press briefing by Health SecretaryMatt Hancock on 24 March. The hospital would be run by NHS staff and volunteers, with 700 military personnel providing logistic assistance. The facility was planned and constructed in conjunction with the British Armed Forces and British architects BDP, with the mission being run from the Headquarters Standing Joint Command in Aldershot, which coordinates resilience missions for the UK. The main contractor was CFES. The facility was formally opened on 3 April by the Prince of Wales in a ceremony during which the hospital's Head of Nursing unveiled a plaque. The first patients were admitted on 7 April. The television medical drama Holby City uses operational ventilators on set, and these were donated to the hospital.
Operational details
The hospital's role is to treat patients already intubated and ventilated at other London hospitals. On 30 March it was announced that legal responsibility for the hospital would be passed to Barts Health NHS Trust, an existing NHS trust, as NHS England does not have legal powers to manage a hospital directly. The hospital's CEO is Charles Knight, seconded from within the Barts trust. The hospital's current capacity is 500 patients, and it could be expanded to take 4,000. In that case it would be the largest hospital in the UK, significantly larger than the biggest permanent hospital, Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, which has 1,677 beds. The hospital was designed with capacity to receive and discharge up to 150 patients per day. The number of staff when the hospital reaches full capacity was first reported as 16,000 and later as 25,000.
Occupancy
During the Easter weekend of 11–12 April, the hospital only had 19 patients because the existing London hospitals had sufficient capacity after increasing their combined intensive care capacity from 770 beds to 1,555. The number of people in London hospitals for COVID-19 peaked on 11 April, according to week-on-week change data. On 21 April, The Guardian reported that staff at the hospital had claimed that the hospital had been "obliged to reject people needing care because it cannot get enough of the nurses usually based in other hospitals to work there". This allegation was rebutted by a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson, who stated that no coronavirus patients were being refused treatment due to a shortage of staff and that the new hospital was only needed to treat patients if existing London NHS hospitals ever became overwhelmed, and that there was adequate spare capacity in the other London facilities and all coronavirus patients could be treated in one of those. An official spokesman stated that the reports were misleading. As of 24 April 41 patients had been treated at the hospital. On 4 May, it was announced that the hospital would be put 'on standby', as no new COVID-19 patients were expected to be admitted.
