Field Hospital: Inner Road To Close

The Inner Road will close to traffic next week (from Monday 20 April) as work progresses at pace to complete the Jersey field hospital at Millbrook.

It's so a hole can be dug in the road to plug the building into the electrical supply and drainage system.

Work is starting this weekend to fit out the temporary building.

The floors, roof and walls have now been put in - with the whole building, along with first 60 beds, due to be operational on the 4th of May.

Growth, Housing and Environmental Director General Andy Scate explains the next steps.

"The building that's been erected as everyone can see now has got a metal floor. So the first thing that has to happen is a wooden floor gets put in and then on top of that a medical, vinyl floor goes on top of that so that we can start creating the hospital innards so to speak.

"Next week we''ll be tying the building into drainage and power."

It is currently planned to be used for around four months from completion.

We also asked Mr Scate about:

* When the rest of the beds (180 in total) will be in place: "As the need in the General Hospital expands, obviously this facility can expand with them, so patients will flow from the General Hospital to here (the field hospital) and it's being managed under the same nursing team.

"Some of this is also dependent on equipment arriving and patient flows. So 4 May (for the first 60 beds) and then throughout May it becomes more operational."

*How it will look: "In simple terms, it's a very big white box! All of what is happening will be inside that box.

"The main entrance will be off Victoria Avenue which is where patients will arrive from the General Hospital. The entrance on the Inner Road will only be used for deliveries and servicing and possibly for the staff entrance. It is minimal staffing levels because of the design of this facility, the majority of movements will be from the Avenue."

* Staffing: "The whole concept of these types of facilities is that they require less staffing. It makes for a much more efficient way of monitoring patients because of the bed layout. 

"The arrangement is 30 beds in each ward so a registered nurse can look down the row and assess patients. We'll need less registered nurses to operate this facility."

* A filtration system: "It's got a high level filtration system as you'd expect on any hospital. It has got a modern filtration and modern ventilation system that you'd expect.

"There is no concern in terms of how this virus and disease is operating in the sense that outside the facility, we are operating on a two metre distance zone and the nature of this virus means that spaces and air outside the facility are absolutely fine. I wouldn't ask residents to be concerned about that at all.

"The normal practices would apply for health and safety within the facility in that we're asking our medical teams and caring teams to be using PPE and those sort of things as we'd expect in the normal community."

Videos showing how the work is progressing will be released in the coming weeks.

The Chief Minister will hold a media briefing on the hospital on Monday (20 April). Senator John Le Fondre will now appear in at least twice-weekly press briefings from next week.