Covid latest: Preston to become Nightingale Surge Hub and hospital visiting suspended in Liverpool
Preston will become home to a Nightingale "surge hub".
It comes as a health boss said the NHS was going on a "war footing" in readiness to fight a new waves of hospitalisations thanks to the Omicron variant.
The site at the Royal Preston Hospital will have a capacity of around 100 patients, and is set to open as early as this week while further sites could be identified to add a further 4,000 "super surge" beds at a later date.
Nightingale Surge Hubs
How will the Nightingale surge hubs work?
How will the Nightingale surge hubs work?
The new Nightingale facilities – manned by a mix of hospital consultants, nurses, and other clinical and non-clinical staff – are designed to take patients who, although not fit for discharge, need minimal support and monitoring while they recover from illness.
NHS Trusts have also been tasked with identifying places, such as gyms and education centres along with other sites, which could be converted to accommodate up to 4,000 "super surge" – roughly four times the number at a typical large district hospital.
The government has insisted the Nightingale hospitals built during the first wave of Covid in March 2020 were a success story of the pandemic - but they were at the time criticised with concerns they stood empty and did not have enough staff.
It comes as three quarters of all local authorities in the North West are recording their highest Coronavirus infection rates since mass testing began in summer 2020, new analysis shows.
29 of the 39 local authorities in the region now have record Covid-19 case rates.
Barrow
Bury
Warrington
Other areas at record levels include Blackpool, Bolton, Liverpool and Wigan.
On Wednesday visiting was suspended at three hospitals in Liverpool.
Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust suspended visitors from today at Royal Liverpool, Aintree University Hospital and Broadgreen University Hospital.
The trust said the suspension was due to a rise in Covid cases. But there will be a number of exceptions to the suspension of visiting.
Two visitors will be allowed to see patients who are receiving end of life care. Other exceptions would also be made.
Meanwhile, the government is under increasing pressure to up the capacity of coronavirus testing, with PCR tests not available to book across England and lateral flow tests unavailable to order online across the UK.
Currently, there are no walk-in or drive-through PCR coronavirus test appointments available across all of England, there are "very few" available in Northern Ireland and Scotland, and a good availability in Wales, according to the government's booking website.
The vaccine rollout is continuing across the region, right through the Christmas period.
The NHS says more than 26,700 people attended first dose appointments in the 7 days before Christmas Eve and over 69,700 people across the region came forward in the first three weeks of December.
NHS vaccine services have also seen an increase in people coming forward for second doses – over 95,800 in the first three weeks of December.
In Cheshire, 5 million jabs now have been given plus a million booster shots.