Why Nightingale Hospitals must now be deployed – Yorkshire Post Letters

THE second lockdown fills me with despair for all the businesses who will now be pushed to the brink and beyond.

What a depressing situation we now face for at least four weeks – at best?

How on earth can we afford this after running up a spending binge of £2 trillion supporting companies so far. It can’t just be about hospitals?

Boris Johnson has been spooked again by the projection that 4,000 people a day will die if we don’t close down. But how accurate are all these figures?

We surely need a change of direction because we’ve been through all this for eight months to protect the NHS and all we will do is suppress the virus, as before, and wreck the economy.

We only hear the opinions of scientists in favour of lockdowns and very little from others who are very much against this – including the WHO and dismissing Sweden who have done well with much less disruption to their economy.

The virus testing is inadequate and not focused enough to help society, even after spending £12bn. My son couldn’t even get a private Covid test – without a trip to London with a £500 fee – when required for urgent television employment abroad necessitating this basic requirement.

I’m dubious about the Nightingale Hospitals – including Harrogate – never being used. If it was full of Covid patients, then I would see the evidence and be concerned at that point for possible more national drastic action. My own theory is they are window dressing. I don’t think we have enough nurses and doctors to man them. What has the Government been doing for eight months?

Why haven’t we trained up thousands of nurses for emergency intensive care units? We need a war footing. Get all the retired nurses and doctors on standby (and working GPs) for immediate hospital engagement.

Protect the most vulnerable as best we can, given this crisis, but equally protect businesses – open them and insist all those under 50 work, obey the safety rules – and get on with their lives.

Were all our military commanders ordered to refrain from winning battles because they might overwhelm hospital beds? Exactly.

From: Hilary Andrews, Nursery Lane, Leeds.

SAD to read that operations are being delayed in all the hospitals in our region because beds are being taken by patients with Covid-19 who, because of better treatments, are spending longer in hospital than initially.

Can anyone tell me why the Nightingale Hospital in Harrogate is not being used for these patients so that operations can continue in the teaching hospitals? They were built and kitted out for patients with Covid-19 and should be used for that purpose. Or was their building just a cosmetic exercise?

From: Jeff Thomas, Huby, Leeds.

IS now not the time to put the Nightingale Hospital in Harrogate on “operational status” to take the Covid cases, thereby taking the pressure off the already stretched NHS staff in Leeds and surrounding areas?

Again, to help with the workload, what about calling on the Armed Services Nursing Corps to assist where appropriate?

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