The NHS may set up “field hospitals” in the car parks of existing hospitals staffed partly by army medical personnel to help cope with a potential Omicron-driven surge in Covid patients.
Hospital canteens, offices and meeting rooms could also be turned into makeshift wards if the new variant leaves so many people seriously ill that the health service may be overwhelmed.
NHS England has told hospital bosses to make plans to take both steps in the coming weeks as part of a series measures to give the service “super-surge” extra capacity. However, it will only order the implementation of such dramatic and unprecedented moves if Omicron leads to even greater numbers of patients with Covid needing treatment than during the last peak in January.
The plans, first reported by the Health Service Journal (HSJ), come amid deepening fears that the numbers of health staff off work sick with Covid could hamper the NHS’s response to Omicron.
One in 10 doctors are off work in the UK, figures revealed on Wednesday, as medical leaders warned the highly transmissible new variant was fuelling…
