Additional hospitals set up in Britain to help ease the stress on health services during the Coronavirus, COVID-19, pandemic will close from April, the Health Secretary announced on Tuesday.
The Nightingale Hospitals, which were set up across Britain last Spring, are to shut down in the coming weeks as the number of COVID-19 patients has declined, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said.
In a video published on Twitter, Hancock said there were fewer than 10,000 COVID-19 patients in hospitals across Britain, down from a peak of 40,000.
“We’re now in a position to stand down our Nightingale Hospitals,’’ Hancock said, thanking the staff that worked in the hospitals and helped to build them.
Ten hospitals were built, providing more than 12,000 beds to patients in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland over the past year.
The branches in London and Sunderland, north England, are to remain open as vaccination centres, according to a spokeswoman for the National Health Service (NHS).
Britain has seen coronavirus cases consistently fall since January, with 4,712 new daily cases reported on Monday.
In December, the four nations hit a peak of 81,551 cases reported in one day, the highest number since the government began rolling out coronavirus tests in March 2020.
A total of 22.3 million Britons have received their first coronavirus jab so far.
dpa/NAN
