Health chiefs: Nightingale Hospital not currently needed in Guernsey

Channel
Guernsey
Wednesday 15 April 2020 at 6:08pm

Health bosses in Guernsey say there is currently no need for an overflow hospital to be built.

Work is already underway on a Nightingale hospital in Jersey, providing extra bed capacity to deal with coronavirus cases.

Guernsey's Medical Director, Dr Peter Rabey, says Guernsey's Princess Elizabeth Hospital can be expanded 'quite significantly' with staff moved from other areas of the hospital to care for patients.

Number of coronavirus cases in the Channel Islands

Any health team in this crisis can be overwhelmed, so we have been doing the planning and at the moment, we have detailed modelling behind the scenes of worst-case and likely scenarios. At the moment we have expanded the bed base at the Princess Elizabeth Hospital and we think we have a way to do that further if we come to a point of being overwhelmed. We think we can use one area of the hospital, share staff who are already in the hospital to staff it and expand the bed base to 70 from a place that currently has 24 patients in so that gives us by population numbers a big expansion capacity that we can draw on if we need to. We can fit another 10 beds around the physical hospital so we can expand quite significantly within the PEH site. That is important to us as we have staff and oxygen there and the things we need so that will be our first port of call.

Deputy Heidi Soulsby, President of Guernsey's Health and Social Care Committee, says that there can be extra challenges that come with a Nightingale hospital - but that steps are being taken to address those if the need for one arises.

What are the signs and symptoms of Covid-19?

It has been confirmed that contingency plans are in place for another site should the current service get overwhelmed because of a rise in coronavirus cases, but the Chief Minister hopes these will never need to come to fruition if the public continues to heed the 'stay at home' message.

Coronavirus: All the information and advice for the Channel Islands in one place