The hospital set up to support the response to the pandemic will close on 31 March and the mass vaccination centre will relocate to the SSE Hydro.
The NHS Louisa Jordan was not needed to treat Covid-19 patients. Since last July the hospital has played a role in supporting the remobilisation of NHS Scotland and now the staff working there will return to their own health boards or work in the vaccination centre.
The Scottish Events Campus will return to a working events and conference centre – and will be used for COP26 in November this year.
The hospital has carried out 32m000 healthcare appointments and approximately 175,000 people have been vaccinated there. The Blood transfusion Service has gathered around 500 donations of blood there and occupational health services were provided for around 1,000 people.
At the SSE Hydro around 4,000 vaccinations will be administered with capacity to scale up to 10,000 each day.
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. Since July 2020 staff at the Louisa Jordan have treated more than 32,000 patients, trained over 6,900 healthcare staff and students, and, more recently, supported the delivery of our vaccination programme with about 175,000 vaccinations since December.
“As we work our way through the JCVI vaccination priority list and begin to vaccinate more people across the country, we have secured use of the Hydro, located in the Scottish Events Campus, to ensure we can continue to vaccinate people as quickly as supplies allow.
“I want to repeat my thanks to all of our NHS staff working to protect and treat those of us who need it and to everyone who is complying with the necessary restrictions in place. It is because of that continued support that we are able to move forward and see light at the end of the tunnel.”
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
