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Wales Online
Wales Online
Health
Mark Smith

Inside the new ward for Covid-19 patients in the President's Lounge at the Principality Stadium

The WRU President's Lounge at Cardiff's Principality Stadium has been transformed into a hospital ward for coronavirus patients.

New images have been taken of the makeshift ward which was ready to treat its first patients on Easter Sunday.

The home of Welsh rugby has undergone a remarkable overhaul – and has been temporarily renamed Dragon's Heart Hospital – to help fight the Covid-19 pandemic.

The virus has already claimed 384 lives in Wales and has been contracted by at least 5,610 people, although that figure is likely to be far higher. On Monday it was warned the UK death toll would continue to increase with no end to ongoing lockdown measures in sight.

The President's Lounge at the Principality Stadium has been converted into a hospital ward (Mark Lewis Photography)
The President's Lounge at the Principality Stadium has been converted into a hospital ward (Mark Lewis Photography)

The Dragon's Heart Hospital contains 2,000 beds with 300 currently available for people being treated for coronavirus.

It has been designed and made operational in under two weeks – a process that would normally take two years.

Around 2,500 staff are expected to be working there when at full capacity.

The President's Lounge at the Principality Stadium has been converted into a hospital ward (Mark Lewis Photography)
The President's Lounge at the Principality Stadium has been converted into a hospital ward (Mark Lewis Photography)
The Principality Stadium has been transformed into a hospital to treat coronavirus patients (Mark Lewis Photography)

Len Richards, chief executive of Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, tweeted out the first pictures of the makeshift wards and beds on Easter Sunday.

The images also show the giant tents that have been erected on the pitch to control the temperature within the stadium where up to 700 patients will soon be treated.

As well as the pitch area raised platforms will house another 200 patients.

Other huge spaces in the bowels of the stadium are also being used including the home and away dressing rooms, which have already been turned into temporary offices.

More than 18,000 bed pans will need to be emptied every day, 20,000 porter visits will be required daily to different parts of the hospital, three-and-a-half tons of clinical waste will be removed off-site, and hundreds of thousands of litres of oxygen will be brought to the venue.

A mobile CT scanner, four X-ray machines, and a mobile laboratory are all being delivered.

In two weeks the complete 2,000-bed hospital will be fully operational after a mammoth effort involving 5,000 hours of planning and work by around 650 contractors and 30 members of the armed forces who have been helping build beds.

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