U.K.’s Health Service Sets Up Temporary Care Hubs for Omicron
U.K.’s Health Service Sets Up Temporary Care Hubs For Omicron
(Bloomberg) --
The U.K.’s National Health Service is setting up so-called Nightingale care hubs to prepare for a potential surge in Covid-19 admissions due to the omicron variant.
The temporary structures will be capable of providing diagnostics and emergency care to about 100 patients and will be erected in the grounds of eight hospitals across the U.K., the NHS said in a statement Thursday.
Work will begin on the hubs this week and will improve the healthcare system’s resilience if soaring infections outstrip existing capacity, the NHS said.
The U.K.’s health system is “on a war footing,” given the high level of infections across the country, Stephen Powis, the NHS’s national medical director, said in the statement. The service does “not yet know exactly how many of those who catch the virus will need hospital treatment,” he said.
The country reported more than 183,000 new Covid infections on Wednesday, a daily record, fueled by the spread of omicron. Although hospitalizations are rising across the U.K., the average weekly number of deaths is the lowest since July.
Covid with omicron was described earlier this week by John Bell, an immunologist at the University of Oxford, as less severe and “not the the same disease we were seeing a year ago,” when deaths were a multiple of what they are currently.
The U.K. had set up Nightingale hospitals during the first wave of Covid in 2020, but later closed them after they were little-used.
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