Troops are helping to provide an additional 500 beds exclusively for COVID-19 patients at leisure and education centres across Cumbria in the latest move to tackle the pandemic.
Penrith Leisure Centre is the nearest to Keswick of five emergency venues being established to support Cumbria’s NHS hospitals. The others are Whitehaven Sports Centre, The Sands Centre in Carlisle and Kendal Leisure Centre, plus Furness College in Barrow.
Work began today (Weds Ap 1) on transforming the currently closed leisure centres and installing the additional beds, which will be available if the county’s hospitals reach full capacity during the pandemic. The beds will be allocated by NHS staff as required and will not be for non-coronavirus patients.
Andrew Slattery, from Keswick, is assistant chief constable and chairman of the multi-agency Cumbria Strategic Co-ordination Group. He said: “Equipment is being installed through this week with the assistance of Ministry of Defence troops who are supporting preparations in Cumbria.
“These facilities have been arranged locally in anticipation of the likely demand on NHS bed space. The full operational model of how the new facilities would work is still being developed but work now will ensure that the basic physical infrastructure is in place should it be needed.
“This is a prudent and sensible approach given how this pandemic has developed in other countries. I am very grateful to all of those people who have helped us achieve this and the strategic coordinating group will continue to support our NHS colleagues in any way we can.”
He stressed that the additional beds were not “field hospitals” and that it was a local initiative led by Cumbria Local Resilience Forum, separate from the nationally-led NHS Nightingale centres being created in some major cities. Equipment was due to start arriving at Penrith Leisure Centre this afternoon for distribution to the other four sites.
Lyn Simpson, chief executive of North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust said: “We welcome the news that additional bed capacity will be available to us in the coming weeks in anticipation of increased demand on our services. We are very grateful for the fantastic response from our multi agency partners in securing this additional capacity, and we will now work together to plan how these facilities can be used.”
