Watch: NHS Louisa Jordan decommissioned after treating no Covid-19 patients

The NHS Louisa Jordan temporary hospital has been decommissioned after just under a year of service, without ever having treated a Covid-19 patient.

Staff began dismantling the hospital, based at the SEC in Glasgow, on Thursday after it was closed at the end of March.

The equipment and furniture of the 1,000-bed facility will be packed up and sent away for storage, from where it will then be redistributed around the NHS in Scotland. The vaccination centre based at the site has been moved to the SSE Hydro.

The hospital, which has cost £56 million to build and run, was opened in April 2020 as an overspill facility for Covid-19 patients.

But it has not been used to treat a single patient with the virus, a fact that the Scottish Government said it welcomed, as the site had been set up as a “contingency”.

It was put into use for non-Covid patients from July, and has since hosted more than 32,000 outpatient and diagnostic appointments, trained over 6,900 healthcare staff and students, and 175,000 Covid-19 vaccinations.

The SSE Hydro will continue to run daily clinics with the ability to administer a minimum of 4,000 vaccinations each day, and capacity to scale up to 10,000.

Picture: John Devlin

On announcing the closure, Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said: “I want to thank everyone who has supported the establishment of NHS Louisa Jordan.

"From the contractors involved in the building work, to the support staff who have worked throughout and the staff who have treated patients and administered Covid vaccinations, each one of them has played a vitally important role in helping to protect our NHS and save lives.”

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