Sunderland's £23.5m Nightingale Hospital closes

Sunderland's Nightingale Hospital, one of seven emergency sites set up to take coronavirus patients, has closed.

It opened on 5 May 2020 with Tyneside TV stars Ant and Dec joining the Countess of Wessex in the celebrations.

The 460-bed facility was built in a converted industrial unit neighbouring Nissan's giant car-making complex.

It cost at least £23.5m and was intended to help cope with cases if existing hospitals were overwhelmed, but no Covid-19 patients were admitted.

It was eventually turned into a mass vaccination centre and more than 275,000 people were jabbed there.

Emma Lewell-Buck, Labour MP for South Shields, has previously said it was "ill-thought out", "not money well spent" and was a "shambles from the outset".

"This money could have been spent on PPE or other things," she said.

North East vaccine clinical director Dr Stewart Findlay told BBC Look North it was right to open the building when they did.

"We had no idea how bad things were going to get at that stage," he said.

"We had seen catastrophic scenes in China and in Italy and in other civilised countries in the world, so we had to prepare for the worst, and thank goodness we never needed to use this hospital."

He said the NHS was "very close" to being overwhelmed before the vaccine programme started, adding there would have been enough staff for the hospital if it had been needed.

Equipment from the NHS Nightingales will be redistributed to other hospitals or put in storage "for use in future crises", a Department of Health and Social Care spokeswoman said.

"The Nightingale hospitals were the final insurance policy to protect NHS capacity," the spokeswoman said.

"We make no apologies for supporting the amazing people in our NHS and taking decisive action to save lives."

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