WATCH: Hospital for recovering Covid patients to open on Friday

By Michael McHugh, PA and Q Radio News

A hospital to rehabilitate recovering Covid-19 patients is due to open in Co Antrim on Friday.

It is for those who are well enough to leave acute medical services but would benefit from care which cannot be provided at home.

That includes occupational therapy designed to help them become more mobile again after long periods bed-ridden and suffering from fatigue.

The Nightingale facility will be part of the Whiteabbey Hospital.

Health Minister Robin Swann visited on Wednesday.

He said: “I am very pleased to be able to visit the new facility today and very impressed that it has been so rapidly established.

“This is yet another example of our health service adapting at speed to the challenges created by this pandemic.

“This new model of nursing and enhanced therapy care is about providing the right care in the right place at the right time by the multi-disciplinary team – one of the cornerstones of the transformation agenda for health and social care.”

This first phase will provide an additional 23 beds with further expansion to follow.

It will be run by the Northern Health and Social Care Trust and will be available to patients from across Northern Ireland.

Care will be led by experienced advanced nurses and healthcare workers. Medical treatment will be provided by GPs.

Mr Swann added: “The new Whiteabbey Nightingale should also ease pressure on acute hospitals by facilitating discharges of people who are no longer acutely unwell but need further support before hospital discharge.”

The Health Minister was accompanied on the visit by Chief Nursing Officer Professor Charlotte McArdle.

He was welcomed to the facility by Bob McCann, Northern Health Trust chairman, and Jennifer Welsh, the trust’s chief executive.

Audrey Harris, the trust’s director for medicine, said 70 people were delayed in hospital during the last Covid-19 surge who could have benefited from rehabilitation.

When fully operational, Whiteabbey will provide up to 100 beds.

It has much better facilities for rehabilitation than a temporary hospital set up in a closed Belfast hotel during the last wave and doctors understand a lot more about the condition.

Ms Harris said: “These patients are deconditioned and far from what their normal level of function would be.

“Fatigue and psychological well-being are all huge issues for people who are post-Covid.

“When I talk about fatigue, I mean fatigue as in their ability to carry out the daily activities, the fatigue in their muscles where their mobility will be restricted.”

Northern Ireland’s main Nightingale hospital for acute patients, which is located in Belfast City Hospital, was stood down after the peak of the first wave of the pandemic passed last spring.

It reopened earlier this autumn following sustained growth in the number of patients requiring admission on ventilation.

At one stage, hospitals were at more than full capacity and in full surge emergency stance.

Several hospitals across Northern Ireland have cancelled elective procedures to cope with the added coronavirus pressures.