Last appointments held at NHS Louisa Jordan Hospital on final day before closure

When Nicola Sturgeon announced the creation of a temporary hospital for use in the event of a surge in coronavirus patients, she said: “I hope this facility will not be needed”.

One year on, the NHS Louisa Jordan will close, thankfully having not been required to treat Covid inpatients.

But healthcare bosses have hailed the centre’s impact in keeping Scotland’s NHS running.

The facility, inside Glasgow’s Scottish Event Campus (SEC), came into operation in April 2020.

Named after a Scottish nurse who died in service during the First World War in the Serbian typhus epidemic, the Louisa Jordan was on stand-by with the NHS on an emergency footing.

As case numbers fell last summer, the hospital switched focus and since July 2020 it has played a crucial role in supporting the remobilisation of NHS Scotland.

After carrying out over 32,000 healthcare appointments, training over 6,900 healthcare staff and students and vaccinating about 175,000 people, Wednesday March 31 will be the last day of outpatient and diagnostic appointments, as well as all training and blood donations.

Vaccinations will continue until April 3 at the current site, moving to The SSE Hydro next door from April 6.

Once relocated, the NHS Louisa Jordan vaccination centre will continue, in partnership with other NHS Boards, to run daily clinics for members of the public to receive their Covid-19 vaccination, with the ability to administer up to 10,000 vaccinations per day.

Jill Young, Chief Executive of NHS Louisa Jordan, said: “Thanks to the continued efforts of the public, NHS Louisa Jordan was not needed to treat Covid inpatients. However, it has made a huge impact as part of NHS recovery and remobilisation of our health system.

“Without NHS Louisa Jordan, thousands of people would not have had outpatient and diagnostic appointments, important research and training would not have been carried out, and as one of the largest vaccinations centres in the UK we have clearly played a vitally important role to protect our NHS and save lives.

“NHS Louisa Jordan has been a true collaboration from inception to decommission. I want to thank everyone who has supported the establishment and running of NHS Louisa Jordan over the last year and vaccinations going forward.”

© Andrew Milligan / PA

Equipment from NHS Louisa Jordan, such as CT scanners, will be repurposed and transferred for use in other NHS facilities, helping to ensure this facility brings further benefits to patients across Scotland.

Earlier this month, health secretary Jeane Freeman said: “I want to thank everyone who has supported the establishment of NHS Louisa Jordan. From the contractors involved in the building work, to the support staff who have worked throughout and the staff who have treated patients and administered Covid vaccinations, each one of them has played a vitally important role in helping to protect our NHS and save lives.

“We said from the start that this facility has a vital part of our Covid-19 contingency planning but we hoped it would not be needed to treat Covid patients. Thanks to the continued efforts of the public, we have been able to maintain capacity in our hospitals across the country and use this facility to remobilise health services and treat patients whose healthcare had to be cancelled last year due to Covid.”