Selfless volunteers who help out at the new Nightingale coronavirus hospital in London have been warned they will witness death.
Officials have told those who signed up to work in the Canning Town facility between 50% and 80% of patients who require a ventilator will not survive, a volunteer told Mail Online.
Although it opened today, the huge hospital, which was built at lightning pace in the ExCel Centre over the past week, has a reported shortage of doctors.
Senior nurse practitioners have been left in charge of some wards due to staff shortages caused by a lack of testing for medics, MailOnline reported.
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Number 10 defended its testing regime for NHS staff today after much criticism.
The Prime minister's official spokesman said that more than 2,000 front-line medics in England had been assessed.
"We are very clear that we want more testing to be carried out," he added.
Despite building work only beginning last Wednesday NHS Nightingale was ready to take patients today.
The hospital has 4,000 beds which will mostly be taken up by younger sufferers - making it the largest critical care facility in the world.
It will be used to treat Covid-19 patients who have been transferred from other intensive care units across London.
More than 16,000 members of staff could be needed to run it if it reaches full capacity.
Among them will be easyJet and Virgin Atlantic staff who are out of work since planes were grounded and who will work alongside medical staff.
The Army have been working around the clock, with many doing 15-hour days, to get the hospital up and running as quickly as possible.
When the hospital was announced, the NHS's chief executive Simon Stevens said: "Under these exceptionally challenging circumstances the NHS is taking extraordinary steps to fight coronavirus.
"That’s why NHS clinicians and managers are working with military planners and engineers to create, equip, staff and open the NHS Nightingale London, and we’re very grateful for their support.
“This will be a model of care never needed or seen before in this country, but our specialist doctors are in touch with their counterparts internationally who are also opening facilities like this, in response to the shared global pandemic.
“Despite these amazing measures, the fact is no health service in the world will cope if coronavirus lets rip, which is why NHS staff are pleading with the public to follow medical advice – stay at home, stop the virus spreading, and save lives.”
