VS: "I wasn't specifically having a pop at Hancock - but as he is the Secretary of State for Health it seemed that the use of the Nightingale units would be a reasonable question to ask him. I assume that he does communicate with NHS management?As Covid patients can't have any visitors anyway, moving them - where possible - would just seem sensible and help all other hospitals to get back to treating people with other illnesses which in some cases are life threatening too."RC: If/when a suspected Covid patient is considered so seriously ill that he/she needs to be admitted to hospital, then it is up to the paramedics, guided by the patients GP or 111 etc, to decide whether to take him to the nearest hospital or a specialist Covid centre. Once there, it is for the hospital's consultants to decide whether they will treat the patient on-site, or whether it would be better to transfer him/her to another centre, which may be a Nightingale hospital, or may not.I fail to see how Hancock could have any personal input into such a process, or could be at all to blame if the paramedics and consultants decide they do not need to use these Nightingale hospitals very often.Which suggests strongly to me that our existing hospitals have been proven to have had enough ICU beds to cope not to need the Nightingales (even if the actual staff are horribly overworked and under equipped etc, but that's a different matter)Now you may think that they (Nightingales) were therefore a waste - hindsight is a wonderful thing. But they didn't cost a huge amount in the scale of things and it would have been immeasurably worse had they been needed, but never built.
Richard Cathcart ● 2370d