Nightingales were just window-dressing

EXPERIENCE suggests that, if you want to contract Covid-19, one of the places you might visit is a hospital. I suppose that is in the nature of the institution.

But in response to your question, yes of course the Nightingale Hospitals should be opened, if only to isolate Covid-19 patients from others. Except… er… they are being quietly dismantled.

The Government claims, in the face of photographs of empty spaces and stacked equipment, that they are on “standby”. Really? In the middle of a serious spike in infections?

It is said that only three Nightingale Hospitals, including Exeter, currently have any patients. Some are reported to have had no patients at all.

They were set up at a cost of some £220 million – on one estimate, a cost of £1 million per patient.

Many senior clinicians have expressed the view that there were never sufficient staff to run them. That is hardly surprising after