No immediate plans to use Birmingham council buildings for coronavirus fight

Last week it was revealed that Birmingham Airport is set to be used as a temporary mortuary to house those killed by coronavirus, with a reported capacity of 12,000 bodies available at the site.

Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre (NEC) has also been confirmed that it is to be used as a temporary coronavirus hospital during the pandemic, with similar large scale projects underway in Manchester and London.

However it appears that there are currently no plans to use council buildings as emergency facilities, with a member of the city council’s cabinet saying that the current priority is to get patients out of hospital to free up capacity.

Speaking at a weekly briefing on the West Midlands’ response to the coronavirus crisis, cabinet member for health and social care, Councillor Paulette Hamilton, said: “We’ve already started working with the health service, and we have already started to look at buildings where we can work with the NHS with the actual buildings themselves, and conversations are ongoing.

“As far as it goes, and as far as I know, at this moment in time we’re not looking at closing council buildings so that they can be used just for coronavirus patients.

“Because as you may appreciate, the big push here is to get as many people out of hospital as possible, get them into the community, back into their own homes, or back into facilities that are council-run or run by other organisations.

“If we lose those beds to coronavirus it will then block up hospitals even more. So at this moment in time there is nothing that has been discussed to say that our buildings and our beds will be given over to coronavirus patients.”