Two businesses in Leeds have joined forces to manufacture hundreds of beds to be used at Nightingale hospitals across the country.
Seven Nightingale hospitals have opened, including a 500-bed capacity hospital at the Harrogate Convention Centre, but thousands of pieces of specialist equipment are now needed to kit them out.
Leeds-based Herida Healthcare was initially asked to make unique air-pump mattresses which prevent bed sores for the Nightingale hospital in London, but the surge in demand has since gone through the roof.
However, they have now linked up with Perry Uniform, a Leeds firm that usually makes school uniforms, to create the mattress covers.
Both companies are working 24 hours a day to keep up with the demand and more than 500 covers were produced in the first three days.
The mattresses have been taken directly to Nightingale hospitals all over the country to ensure they are fully equipped to deal with an anticipated surge of Covid-19 patients.
Neil Smith, founder of Herida Healthcare, said: "We all acknowledge the incredible hard work of our NHS in these testing times and it’s great to see the team at Perry Uniform playing a vital part in scaling up to mass production in order to meet the national requirement for pressure care (anti bed sore type) mattresses across the country.
"The Leeds region, its businesses and support networks have showed total unity when it was needed most."
Bernard Bunting, managing director of Perry Uniform, said: "In this national emergency, we immediately saw a good opportunity to collaborate in supporting the amazing NHS. The Perry team were hugely proud to be able to play a small part in this national effort.
"This was such a productive three-way collaboration facilitated by the council."
The Harrogate Nightingale hospital opened over the Easter weekend, with construction taking less than two weeks.
The eight halls, which are normally used for exhibitions and events, have been transformed into a makeshift hospital with ventilators and critical care beds now in place.
