Nurses and MPs last night led pleas to open up the Nightingale hospitals after a surge in Covid intensive care admissions. Calls were made to use the seven emergency units built for £220million during the first wave as one NHS trust reached crisis point and four nearby hospitals were at full stretch.
Bosses at Royal Stoke University Hospital raised the alarm as the number of critically-ill patients in Staffordshire swelled.
There were just eight ventilation beds left when its alert level rose to level four – the highest critical level – on Friday.
Sources said the hospital was totally overwhelmed by Covid cases, with critically-ill patients transferred as far as Northampton 95 miles away.