Louisa Jordan virus hospital could be used to deal with NHS backlog

Scotland’s £43m temporary coronavirus hospital could be repurposed to help the NHS deal with a backlog of procedures which were halted to deal with the pandemic.

The NHS Louisa Jordan could be repurposed to help the backlog of other medical conditions.

The NHS Louisa Jordan, which was established inside Glasgow’s SEC to increase intensive care capacity as Covid-19 cases began to rapidly rise, has not treated a single patient since it opened a month ago. And as a result of lockdown, intensive care patient numbers have fallen, with only 59 people currently in ICU wards.

At the daily government briefing on coronavirus, the First Minister said that she was “delighted” that the hospital was unused, as otherwise “we would have been dealing with many, many more people being seriously ill, and possibly more people dying, because the capacity of our existing hospitals would have been exceeded.”

She added: “I’m still absolutely of the opinion we were right to prepare it as a contingency because i wouldn’t have wanted to be in a position that we didn’t have that capacity should we have needed it.”

Ms Sturgeon revealed that the hospital could still be used by the NHS to help it deal with the backlog of cancelled procedures.

“We are increasingly seeing cases and hospital admissions decline, though it’s still a fragile position, but as we hopefully continue to see that, our considerations are now how we resume hospital procedures that were paused in order to deal with this.

“No decisions have been taken yet, but one of the things we’re looking at is whether we can use in any way the capacity at NHS Louisa Jordan to deal with that. But I’m very happy about it not having to take any coronavirus patients as yet.”

The hospital opened on April 20 with an initial capacity for 300 patients, having been built in under three weeks at a cost of around £43 million.

It is named after Glasgow-born First World War nurse Sister Louisa Jordan, who died on active service in Serbia in 1915 as part of the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Services.

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