LONDON (Reuters) – Britain has more than 2,000 critical care beds still free for use in the fight against the new coronavirus, health minister Matt Hancock said on Friday.
The Nightingale Hospital, a new hospital in London erected in a conference centre to provide thousands of extra beds for patients with the coronavirus, opened on Friday.
“Since the start of this crisis we’ve boosted the number of critical care beds to care for coronavirus by over 2,500. That’s before the addition we’ll get from the Nightingale hospitals,” Hancock told a news conference.
“In every hospital in the country we have managed to expand capacity and as we stand today over 2000 critical care beds are free and available and they’re ready should they be needed.”
(Reporting by William James, Andy Bruce and Elizabeth Howcroft, Writing by Kylie MacLellan, Editing by Estelle Shirbon)
