Kettering General Hospital cranes new ward on to car park to help cope with Covid-19 pressures

The main car park at KGH will become a new 18-bed ward to help the hospital cope with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the Rothwell Road hospital.

The ward is arriving in pieces to be craned on to car park A, every hour, on the hour, today (Saturday, April 25).

Work to create the raised temporary foundations has been going on this week and it is expected the ward will open on May 18. It is anticipated that it will be in place for six months.

A KGH spokesman said: “The new block is not a coronavirus ward. It is being installed as a contingency measure to support the safe management and flow of non-Covid patients should the need arise.

“Within the hospital we have had to reconfigure existing wards to deal with coronavirus and our bed modelling suggests we may need more bed capacity. We are working through plans for this 18 bedded facility at the moment.”

Visitors are being advised to use the ground floor of the multi-storey car park which is further away from the hospital building.

It is unclear how the hospital is funding the new premises or if any extra parking capacity will be put in place elsewhere. Nobody from the Rothwell Road hospital was available for comment today.

Hospitals around the country who believe they have now passed the peak of the virus are turning to ways of coping with the ongoing threat of coronavirus in the coming months. Many are beginning to think about how to keep their hospitals running and restart planned surgeries for vulnerable patients while treating patients suffering from highly contagious Covid-19.

KGH has had 85 deaths from coronavirus and there are 966 confirmed cases in the county.

The hospital has already created a temporary intensive care ward inside the building to bring ICU bed capacity to 30.