EIGHT More Nightingale Hospital Hubs Stand Empty as Surge Predicted by Government Models Fails to Appear

2 min read

Eight Nightingale hospital surge hubs were built by the Government this winter for an undisclosed amount of money that now stand empty in anticipation of a wave that never came. MailOnline has more.

This is the first look inside one of the NHS‘ new Nightingale surge hubs – which officials concede might never be used as the Omicron wave continues to recede.

The temporary site on the grounds of Royal Preston Hospital is one of eight commissioned across England last month, when the fourth wave looked as if it could threaten the health service. 

It has been assembled in the car park at the city’s biggest hospital in less than four weeks and can house roughly 100 Covid patients – but it is currently empty. 

Local NHS bosses have indicated that the new hub might never be used and medical unions have warned it could swallow up staff and pull resources away from other parts of the health service. 

Other make-shift structures are being built in London, Leeds, Solihull, Leicester, Stevenage, Ashford and Bristol for an undisclosed amount of money.

England’s original Nightingale hospitals, built in 2020, cost a total of £500million, which included running costs, stand-by costs and decommissioning costs. But they saw only light use before being mothballed.

The new, smaller sites will remain on standby to look after Covid sufferers who are not well enough to go home but need minimal supervision during their recovery.      

Kevin McGee, chief executive of Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Trust which looks after the Royal Preston, previously said: “My hope is that we never have to use it. We’re planning for it, and that’s quite right because we need to make sure that we put the appropriate capacity in place should we need it, but I’m hopeful we can manage within our core bed base.”

However, Dr Brian McGregor, of the British Medical Association (BMA), said staffing more beds would mean “falling further behind” on routine work.

Worth reading in full.

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197 Comments
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Newman20
Newman20
4 years ago

Another massive waste of taxpayers’ money to ‘protect the NHS’ – an organisation that anyone with a brain cell can see is palpably unfit for purpose.

Yet the Fat Dictator and Fishy Niknak now propose taxing us even further so that more of our money can be thrown down this black hole of waste and inefficiency.

SomersetHoops
SomersetHoops
4 years ago

Surely these hospitals could be used to offer safe beds to the so called bed blockers who are well enough to go to elderly homes or their own home where they need minimal or low level medical supvision, but that level of supervision isn’t available or a bed there isn’t available. Then these hospitals could be used and staffed by lower trained staff. These hopitals are often near major hospitals so better qualified staff could be called upon in an emergency. This would put these resources to good use rather than wasting the millions of pounds of our money used to provide them.

Jaguarpig
Jaguarpig
4 years ago

They should put Ferguson in on of these with a pipe up or down every orifice

tony rattray
tony rattray
4 years ago

Coming to a cinema near you soon – PART DEUX – Return of the nightingales! This time its for real and going to bloody…OH DEAR.

bowlsman
bowlsman
4 years ago

Will we never learn, the cost of this crap must be astronomical. Somebody needs a common sense transplant.

JIGR1969
JIGR1969
4 years ago

At the beginning, my other half was completely skeptical about how mild covid was simply by the additional capacity being built.

Why would they build such capacity if they didn’t expect a huge causality toll, was the thing she’d say whenever I mention that covid isn’t nothing to be fearful of.

I bet she wasn’t the only one in the country who thought that!

mojo
mojo
4 years ago

The Globalists used to make war to create their wealth. Now they use health to steal the taxpayers money and keep their own pockets full.

JohnK
JohnK
4 years ago

That’s insurance for you. They should have disclosed the premium, with it being public expenditure. I suspect that the internal negotiations were a fair bit to do with money, as well. E.g. One of the early ones was built by the MoD, just on the run up to a budget that never happened. Would have made them look good, and it’s quite likely that they were demonstrating to the Treasury, to discourage it from cutting their cash flow, as it were.

DJ Dod
DJ Dod
4 years ago

A hospital with no patients? That rings a bell. I think it won the ‘Florence Nightingale Award’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-5zEb1oS9A

Star
Star
4 years ago

“Cover-up” is a much misused term, but one is underway right now at the heart of the British government.

It’s not a coverup until participants and witnesses are pressured into changing what they say they saw or did, perhaps even into swearing blind they didn’t see anything at all.

That’s now happening.

Was Michael Gove at any of the parties?

ellie-em
ellie-em
4 years ago

The one at Preston looks like a big top tent. Quite appropriate, really, for the circus that’s been going on since March 2020. I suppose they can recoup some of the millions wasted by hiring them out for weddings and such like. Plenty of parking available.

tom171uk
tom171uk
4 years ago

Better keep the Nightingale things ready for the next variant, which might be desperately scary. We have to keep the public in a state of fear. It’s for their own good.

David Beaton
David Beaton
4 years ago

What an evil scam we have been subjected to ! What totally mendacious and diabolic frauds have seized control of our country and all its Institutions!

Even the memory of ‘Nightingale’ has been fraudulently hijacked and abused by this Government of Globalist lackeys ‘under orders’.

mojo
mojo
4 years ago
Reply to  David Beaton

That’s what socialists and communists do. They change the meaning of language to seduce the populace to enter the spiders webb of poverty, central control and reliance.

AndyPandy
AndyPandy
4 years ago

I think they built temporary morgues early on in the first Lockdown.

HumanRightsForever
HumanRightsForever
4 years ago

They look quite good, maybe we could use them to provide treatment to those millions of patients who didn’t receive proper care for last two years?.. Just asking.

ElSabio
ElSabio
4 years ago

Comment of the day.

mojo
mojo
4 years ago

We have not trained enough nurses and doctors. The government just enjoys sacking them. If there really was a pandemic no medical staff would have been furloughed. It is shocking that not one journalist has queried this and even worse that the public haven’t questioned it.

Squire Western
Squire Western
4 years ago

Everyone’s a ‘lockdown sceptic’ now. Not acceptable. The lockdowners need exposing and punishing.

rtaylor
4 years ago

The upside is those wishing to decouple from the £ or future CBDC have a rough estimate on how much it costs to build 8 flat-pack hospitals.

Pete Sutton
Pete Sutton
4 years ago

“It’s thanks to mask wearing`that the hubs weren’t needed” – Official excuse still available for use.

Ceriain
Ceriain
4 years ago
Reply to  Pete Sutton

“It’s thanks to mask wearing`that the hubs weren’t needed”

I’ll see your ‘mask wearing’, Pete, and raise you:

“It’s thanks to the magnificent effort of the British people coming forward for their boosters that the hubs weren’t needed”

tom171uk
tom171uk
4 years ago
Reply to  Ceriain

It’s the jabs wot done it. Or our world beating track and trace.

Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
4 years ago

If nothing else happens at least large numbers of people will get together against it. Carry on believe me your days are well and truly numbered I don’t care who you belong to now. Don’t act all cute and innocent when the situation goes down.

Anonymous
Anonymous
4 years ago

I’d suggest you don’t get too complacent, or make too many mocking remarks about the money that was “wasted” on these 8 surge hubs. Time will tell whether this money was “wasted” or not.
 
Most of us here can all agree the “vaccines” are toxic and were/are being illegally coerced upon the population. As can most of us agree that the plandemic was well planned in advance.
 
Partygate, Ukraine and statements about returning to normal have pushed one very important thing from people’s minds. That is, the “vaccines”. There’s no let up with the “vaccines”. None whatsoever. The “vaccines” are full steam ahead.
 
Take a look at the erection of this particular surge hub. Take note of the very easily accessible site it is erected on. Is this a hospital building designed specially to treat the sick? Or is it a mortuary designed so as to be able to accommodate the processing and disposal of large numbers of bodies?
 
The last two years have proved what some of us have known all along. There is a malignant tumour festering at the pinnacle of UK society – I think even the Queen bows to it. You need… Read more »

mishmash
mishmash
4 years ago
Reply to  Anonymous

“On top of this, thousands of old people were removed from hospitals in early 2020 and, without first having been tested for COVID-19, were placed in nursing and care homes.”

They were given a good death.

Anonymous
Anonymous
4 years ago
Reply to  mishmash

At least the dispatcher Midazolam had beforehand been well trialled in execution chambers in the United States.

More than can be said for the “vaccines”. 

huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
4 years ago
Reply to  Anonymous

I agree with every word.

Calm before the storm.

Moderate Radical
Moderate Radical
4 years ago

This one’s for the old school:

FB_IMG_1643300020208.jpg
Anonymous
Anonymous
4 years ago

I’m sat here drinking G&Ts, and, man, does that pic bring back memories. Any germ, virus or bacterium worth their salt served an apprenticeship in one of them.

Sinor
Sinor
4 years ago

Great devices.Did you know that they are driven by bits of sandpaper on the internal rollers.?I do as we use to sell them precut sheets of it in p80 grit wetordry when I was a boy ..lol

Fingerache Philip
Fingerache Philip
4 years ago

The ones we used weren’t so clean as that one.

Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
4 years ago

If you read analysis of intellgence agencies from enemy countries they will cite irrartional and neurotic fear of death as a feature of western society. There is a culture of safetyism that seems to have gotten a grip of us, a risk aversity. We need to indenify it and root it out.We are the English. We don’t care if some marauder slices our head off tomorrow. When I was a student I remember women who loved risk and this is what kept me going. We are the English we don’t put up with any bollocks.

Sinor
Sinor
4 years ago
Reply to  Jabby Mcstiff

The trouble is our leaders have decided that,for our improvement ,Englishness must be diluted by importation of the wonderfully diverse opposites.
Its also galling that while the Welsh,Scots and Northern Irish have their own local Parliaments/assemblies the English remaining majority do not have an English Parliament for our issues.We retain the UK Parliament with over representation of the Non English Countries.
In my book thats not right and ,by the way a local mayor,regional assembly does not fit the bill.These are just some EU project hangovers that our Civil service keep bringing up.

English votes for English people I say and that would exclude ,in my book all,those who have another country of origin .Fuse lit and standing back.

Annie
Annie
4 years ago
Reply to  Sinor

You can have the Welsh parliament. You can have all if it. The self-important building, the waste, the greed, the corruption, the cowardly, greedy, canting, grovelling members the horrible anglophobic pseudo-nationalists, the disgusting, lying, bullying stalinist ministers, the even more disgusting cheap imitation of Stalin called Dungford, the bloated bureaucracy, the whole boiling. You can have it for free. In fact, I’ll pay you to take it. Now, directly, immediately, right away, without delay.

Sinor
Sinor
4 years ago
Reply to  Annie

Hi I am making the point the England is under represented despite being the majority population.
I would prefer to get rid of all of these as they are Blair/Socialist /EU driven divide and conquer devices .One national Parliament ,with equalised constituencies will do me ..sort of if we can get better staff to represent us.

Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
4 years ago
Reply to  Sinor

Yes but we recognise that as just nonsense for the sake of diversity. This isn’t reality. If suddenly our country were to be plunged into deep pain then all of that would disappear in an instant. I am not a nationalistic person at all but I know where the land lies. I spend my night times thinking about how to save our people. We have so much to save and cherish.

Sinor
Sinor
4 years ago
Reply to  Jabby Mcstiff

As above response to Annie ,I just get really annoyed at how marginalised and ignored the True English are …..

Unutterably Pistoff
Unutterably Pistoff
4 years ago
Reply to  Jabby Mcstiff

Perhaps a data-scientist will tell us whether the proportion of immortal people is higher among the English than the Scots, Welsh etc. From what I’m told it seems to be pretty high throughout the UK. Hope to God I’m not one.

DanClarke
DanClarke
4 years ago

remove the beds, string fairy lights around the ceiling, tables chairs, ta dah, party place

ElSabio
ElSabio
4 years ago

Don’t close those car-park-clinics just yet….

Funeral director John O’Looney of Milton Keynes family funeral services in Milton Keynes, England shared in his recent interview with kla.tv that deaths are at unprecedented levels at young people in their 20s, 30s and 40s and “all were vaccinated.”

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/never-seen-many-deaths-around-500-600-increase-funeral-director-uk-reveals-increasing-number-death-vaccinated-young-adults/

huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
4 years ago

This site is being destroyed from within. Decent members are not allowed free speech but the likes of rational and rayc can hi-jack every thread and ruin it for the rest.

MODS – Get a GRIP!!!°

ElSabio
ElSabio
4 years ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Hear! Hear! We need a statement from the man at the top.

Aleajactaest
Aleajactaest
4 years ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Just ignore them Old Chap….

If we all did that they’d fade away.

milesahead
milesahead
4 years ago
Reply to  Aleajactaest

Flag their comments – it doesn’t take long to do. Then ignore them!

Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
4 years ago

In terms of critical thinking and intellectual resistance this country has been at the foremost. We should never forget that. Even in the darkest of times we have people of character who don’t blindly follow the narrative. And people in other countries do expect a lot from us as well they should. I think that our efforts in these islands have helped in the destructon of the narrative, I see that when I see our data being referred to overseas. Never forget the time that you put in to understanding this situation. If you didn’t then maybe you wouyld’ve been spiked.

ElSabio
ElSabio
4 years ago
Reply to  Mayo

Odds on a speedy retraction?

Vaxtastic
Vaxtastic
4 years ago
Reply to  ElSabio

Or a tragic suicide. Two shots to the back of the head from ten yards perhaps.

Dodderydude
Dodderydude
4 years ago
Reply to  ElSabio

It’s already there in the article. Effectively he says “Oh maybe I shouldn’t have said that. No, on second thoughts, it’s probably not the vaccine. It’s most likely covid”. But presumably the DM want to get the man sacked or forced to resign.

Moderate Radical
Moderate Radical
4 years ago

These white elephants were nothing more than a product of the propaganda machine. Their construction was used as a ‘rallying cry’ for the dumb masses, a contrived rekindling of the ‘Bulldog Spirit’ as the transfixed hordes marvelled at the record-breaking time it took to erect one such monstrosity. I was half expecting the bunting to be rolled out with Vera Lynn being pumped out of speakers.

Vaxtastic
Vaxtastic
4 years ago

Exactly. A visual reminder for the masses skimming headlines. Things must be really bad if they need temporary hospitals. They did the same trick elsewhere. Wasn’t it New York where they had a ship converted into a temporary mobile hospital that was also not used?

Annie
Annie
4 years ago

We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when…

Andy
Andy
4 years ago

Tempting as it is to take pot shots at the clumsy, belated and generally too-much-too-late deployment of these surge hubs, I am actually heartened by them. A bit, anyway.

I saw a photo somewhere a few months back which showed two nurses, dressed as if about to disarm a nuclear anthrax bomb apprehensively approaching an origami-inspired bed surrounded by 25th century electronic devices that could be re-used on a sci-fi set. The patient, if there was one, was invisible.

The photo was meant to make us feel gratitude for our brave NHS workers and the wonderful system that employs them. But it got me thinking, how much does all this cost? How much time did it take to get the staff togged up like that, and then untogged. And then retogged for the next patient? How long did their training take up? And all for one patient at a time. How does the process scale?

So I started wondering, how does a health system cope when it is confronted by a disaster way greater in magnitude than could ever be planned for in peacetime? How do you cope when half your hospitals have been destroyed, or half your staff are… Read more »

Vaxtastic
Vaxtastic
4 years ago
Reply to  Andy

We are paying top dollar for them to manage all you suggest inside actual buildings we also pay for, not tents in car parks. That is theatre, as is the scifi vignette you eloquently described. A photo op to maintain a narrative.

The NHS has no competitors. It has no incentive to improve efficiency. Like all public sector beasts its job is to overspend it’s budget so it won’t get less next year. All else is secondary.

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