The former Maze prison site could host Northern Ireland’s coronavirus field hospital, the First Minister said yesterday.
Arlene Foster said the region will be following the Scottish approach to field hospitals as step down facilities rather than housing intensive care beds.
“The health minister has been looking at a number of sites, he intends first of all to flex up his own estate that he has in relation to intensive care beds but as the virus takes hold he believes it will be necessary to expand his hospital estate,” she said.
“The model will be similar to that of Scotland, so the intensive care beds will not be in the field hospital but the step down will be in the field hospital.”
At the leaders’ daily Covid-19 press briefing at Stormont on Tuesday, Mrs Foster described field hospitals as “not tents”, but located in exhibition centres similar to the Nightingale Hospital in London.
“Some of the sites that are being looked at include Balmoral Park and places like that,” she said.
“He (health minister) is doing technical assessments on that at this present moment in time.
“He will come to a decision on that in the near future.”
Earlier on Tuesday the Public Health Agency said there had been six deaths of people who tested positive for Covid-19 since the last update on Monday, bringing the total in the region to 28.
In total 5,885 tests have been carried out in Northern Ireland, with the vast majority negative.
