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£532 million was spent on the Nightingale hospitals which treated a total of 54 patients. Are these hospitals being used today?
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You can't win with these things. One of the complaints about Covid preparation was why didn't we have huge stocks of PPE on standby just in case. It would have helped us deal with the pandemic but if instead we'd only needed half of it I'm sure people would have complained at the waste.
If hospitals had become completely full and people couldn't be admitted for Covid etc then people would have said where's the contingency, we should have built even more Nightingales.
It's only in hindsight anyone knows if we had over-planned or underplanned.
I do think Nightingales were a kneejerk reaction, to be seen to be doing something, given that we didn't have the staff. But they could have been useful if we;d had to put Covid patients in separate buildings from other patients.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing
I'm glad ours in still in use as I have to go there every few months because of my sight. They run many clinics there and are doing more and more ops to help get numbers down at the main hospital. Also we don't have to pay to park there as there is a free park and ride which stops outside. It is nice and clean and I have never seen a hospital with so many toilets and bathrooms.
I could not, and still do not, understand why - when the hospitals had been built at great expense - they were demolished (many unused, I gather).
Obviously we do not have the nurses/doctors to staff them as full hospitals............. but why, oh why, did no-one think to keep them as convalescent homes? Minimal qualified medical staff needed and they would have cleared the backlogs in the wards.
Can anyone give me a good reason, please? I'm baffled, especially when the hospitals are clogged, (we are told) by 'bed-blockers'.