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No further patients will be admitted to the facility, which was created amid much acclaim in just 10 days, and the 12 patients being treated there at the moment are being transferred to other London hospitals.
The Nightingale, built in the ExCel conference centre in the Docklands area of London, has proved surplus to requirements in the fight against coronavirus because established hospitals in the capital coped much better with the influx of critically ill patients after hugely expanding their intensive care units.
It will close on 15 May. Doctors, nurses and other staff working there were told the news on Monday morning. They will return to their usual hospitals during this week and next.
Originally planned to have 4,000 beds, the Nightingale has treated just 54 patients since it was opened by Prince Charles on 3 April and received its first patient on 7 April. It has not admitted a new patient for a week as London hospitals have had spare capacity in their own intensive care units.
Comment: Oops? Looks like those model projections weren't so accurate after all, no?
The four other Nightingales that were opened to stop hospitals being overwhelmed - in Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Harrogate - will also be wound down, though the London hospital will shut first. All were conceived in March, when ministers and health service bosses were concerned that NHS hospitals risked being overwhelmed by significant numbers of people needing to be ventilated to keep them alive, as Italy was confronting at the time.
But while the Manchester hospital has taken some patients, its sister facilities in Birmingham, Bristol and Harrogate have not admitted anyone.
The London Nightingale in particular has proved controversial. Its supporters say that it and the four others were built as "an insurance policy" against the pandemic leaving hospitals unable to provide life or death care to people struggling to breathe because of the disease. But critics claim the hospital was poorly planned and amounted to a PR stunt. Other London hospitals were envious of the staff, kit and priority given to a facility whose purpose they felt was unclear.
NHS England said they did not know how much the Nightingale facilities had cost to build. However, it is expected that it will continue to be able to use the London hospital rent-free for as long as it remains shut, under the terms of its contract with the ExCel's owners, the Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company.
One member of staff told the Guardian: "It was a valiant attempt but came too late so ended up being a white elephant. It was not a useful policy since it turned away more patients than it treated. It seems like it was more a PR exercise, a bit of wartime propaganda."
More than 200 staff were on duty at the London Nightingale on Monday, despite it only having 12 patients.
In a letter to staff, London Nightingale's chief executive, Charles Knight, wrote: "As the prime minister has said, we are now past the first peak in coronavirus cases and the NHS is therefore moving into the second phase of its response to this global pandemic. It is likely that in the coming days we will not need to be admitting patients to the London Nightingale, while coronavirus in the capital remains under control.
"As a result, after the last of this our first group of patients leaves, the hospital will be placed on standby, ready to resume operations as and when needed in the weeks and potentially months to come.
"This does not mean our role in London's response to the virus is over. We must be ready for the possibility that the number of Covid-19 cases rise again if and when the government eases social distancing rules."
Comment: Nope, they'll keep milking this as much as they can.
The prime minister's spokesman confirmed that the London Nightingale "would be ready to receive patients should that be required [in the future] but we are not expecting that to be the case".
Two other planned Nightingales - in Sunderland and Exeter - are still "due to open shortly", he said.
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