Less than three weeks since HPI Building Services in partnership with BAM started work there, NHS Nightingale Yorkshire and the Humber opens today.
Based in the Harrogate Convention Centre, it will provide some 500 more beds for coronavirus patients, if local services need them.
The new facility is one of seven Nightingale hospitals to be set up around the country as part of a massive NHS effort to respond to the greatest global health emergency in more than a century.
This extra capacity is on top of the 33,000 additional beds freed up across NHS hospitals – the equivalent of building 50 district general hospitals – and the up to 8,000 beds put at the NHS’s disposal through an unprecedented deal with the independent sector.
These measures combined mean that capacity still exists in hospitals to care for patients with coronavirus, as well as other patients who may need urgent and emergency treatment, with the Nightingales standing ready if local services need them beyond that.