Where is the extra hospital capacity for the north east?

[Kitchendoctor]

Additional capacity is being created in London, Birmingham and Manchester, yet Newcastle Upon Tyne has quite a high number of cases competed to other, much bigger, cities (144, higher than Manchester, Bristol, Leeds, even some areas of London).
Plus other areas close by aren’t far behind, yet I haven’t seen anything about plans to ramp up our bed capacity.
Why is this??

There's no reason why they wouldn't use the Sage - I don't expect the Birmingham NEC/London ExCel/Manchester CC will be pulled down afterwards. Although it'll be incredibly sad to go to events at any of these places afterwards - we always go to the Christmas concerts at the Sage. Knowing all the suffering that will have gone on there previously would be awful, if they did use it.

Mind you everything and everywhere will bear the memory of this for years to come won't it.

The Sage isn’t the right type of building. They need somewhere with a mass empty/exhibition space and good road access.

I’m a bit surprised at the Sage being mentioned, I didn’t think it had much in the way of easily cleared floor space.

Unlike somewhere like the NEC which has the big exhibition rooms.

Wouldn't the o2 or metro arena be better?

The o2 is a bit small I think? The Arena might be better. But a field hospital on the Town Moor would probably make more sense - there's been an isolation hospital there before.

I can't see The Sage being used, structurally its made up of chambers (that are some how all suspended from each other to reduce transmission of sound) so there is no easily utilised wide open space - it would mean ripping out millions of pounds worth of state of the art interiors.

Sage is totally wrong, even the Baltic would be better. We don’t have a large exhibition centre closer than maybe Harrogate though? Or Keswick. The arena is the most likely I’d guess

@CountFosco

Yes that's why I said the Army have acquired 3 helicopters to evacuate people to their nearest hospital for treatment. The vases in regions of the north and north east of Scotland are vanishingly small compared to glasgow so you can see why that's where the field hospital is. You surely don't expect them to built one in Inverness? They aren't overwhelmed. Even Aberdeen are coping well.
In my town, they have used an unused wing of a care home to bring our convalescence patients and rehab patients to create capacity in the wards. There is no ITU other than Aberdeen and Inverness here.

I'd expect increased capacity in Aberdeen not Inverness. Aberdeen covers a vast region and patients are already flown there (I know lots of people who had to fly to Aberdeen to give birth). While rural areas generally are less badly affected during pandemics and epidemics the cluster of cases in Shetland is worrying for such a small population, 27 cases in a population of 23,000.

The Sage would be absoloutley impractical.

Baltic better, as mentioned upthread, but the ideal would be the Arena. It's getting pulled down anyways, and has the easiest access to A1 of the three places mentioned.

There will be a facility in Aberdeen. for now, it is coping

I'm just a few miles outside of Newcastle and I think people around here dont even believe how bad it is...milling around, socialising, none essential businesses reopening despite closing last week. Hopefully they will soon announce pir emergency hospital so people will start taking it seriously!

Cumbria has had 5 ‘new holding wards’ added in sports halls across the county today. Basically camp beds. Going to be for corona patients who aren’t ready for home.

RAF Kinloss to be a morgue :(

Lot of ice rinks seem to be going to be used too

Lot of ice rinks seem to be going to be used too - is this where I insert my periodic grudge about the demise of Crowtree Ice Rink in Sunderland?

I'd heard two rumours - the near Nissan warehouse one, and also possibly the supermarket that never got opened by Dalton Park were the two I heard.

I used to bloody love Crowtree!

London and Birmingham are having additional hospital first as they have much higher infection and death rates. Lulujakey1 has given figures above but not said if infection death rates.

Ice rinks in Billingham and Whitley Bay too, I wonder if will be used

I guess it makes sense to use ice rinks as morgues, they’re already set up with chillers to keep the temperature cold.

Next to Nissan just been announced

Teesside Gazette.

I guess Teessiders will go north rather than south? I'm probably half way between here and Harrogate!

@CherryPavlova yes, DH is a GP in the Durham area (we live in Newcastle) and his practice has been asked to contribute GP time to a centralised ‘hot hub’ to assess potential covid-19 patients and I guess refer to hospital if necessary. They’ve also been asked to help staff out of hours clinics to provide urgent appointments for non- coronavirus problems. This is all theoretical at the moment as the capacity is not needed yet, but the plans are ready to go as soon as necessary.

There are also secondary care plans in place but I don’t know the details as that’s not his area, although I believe some GPs are being given training in the way the local hospitals work just in case they are needed there.

Further to the above, GPs in hospitals would probably be looking after patients out of ICU but not ready for discharge yet

Scotland

One for the whole of Scotland. In the central belt.

Are we supposed to believe this is because they don't care about Aberdeen or Inverness? Or (as is actually the case) that capacity has been assessed and modelled and that one to cover a 6m population is all that is required?

Newcastle is within easy reach of some of those other places, more so than Inverness or the islands are to Glasgow. Some people will find any reason to look for a problem.

Does anyone actually believe the government would say "ahh, Newcastle, fuck them, if we end up having to choose who to give ventilation to in those areas, that's not going to be a problem, let's not build one"

Scotland will probably get the smaller ones like we have in Cumbria. School halls and leisure centres