The Nightingale hospital in Manchester will be opened for Covid-19 patients by the end of next week.
Professor Jane Eddleston has said that it will monitor patients who have been discharged from regular hospitals in the region.
However, it is unclear where the staff will come from as all the local hospitals are currently busy.
Last Friday it was reported that hospitals in Salford, Stockport and Bolton were at maximum capacity, with 82% of the intensive care beds in Great Manchester occupied.
The whole region is heading into Tier 3 coronavirus restrictions from midnight tonight.
Last night Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that daily hospital admissions in Greater Manchester are higher now than they were at the end of March.
He said: "So we must act where the virus is spreading. In the parts of the country where it is spreading the fastest it is our sombre duty to take action necessary to protect people's lives and protect the NHS."
Mr Hancock added: "It has been clear for some days now that further action is needed across parts of England."
He continued: "In Greater Manchester there have been more coronavirus infections already in October than in July, August and September combined.
"The average daily hospital admissions in Greater Manchester are now higher than they were on March 26 and there are now more Covid-19 patients in Greater Manchester hospitals than in the whole of the South West and the South East combined."
Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham said he was left "open-mouthed" by the news of expected new support for London and Birmingham going into Tier 2 while parts of the north had been in the same position for the past three months.
Speaking to a Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee in Parliament, he said: "I honestly was just open-mouthed really when I read the headlines last night, that there was going to be a support package, it was billed as being for London and Birmingham.
"And it was just a case of 'Hello! We've been under these restrictions for three months'.
"Bolton had their pubs closed for three weeks with nothing, absolutely nothing.
"Why do we see London's issues, much more than we see Liverpool's issues, Greater Manchester's issues?
"That, I think, is a really troubling question that this committee needs to talk about as part of this.
"In some ways it makes me ask what was this last week all about then? The slightly brutal nature of the process that we were all in.
"On Tuesday in my final discussion with the Prime Minister I was making the clear pitch to him that we had been in three months of restrictions and therefore we were in a different position to the Liverpool City Region and different to Lancashire.
"That factor did not weight at all in the final analysis. They basically said, 'No you are going to get the same as the population based figure for Lancashire and Liverpool'.
"I just think there are major questions for the government to answer here as to how it is treating places."
