Two London buses have been converted into ambulances to help ease the strain on the NHS in the hard-hit capital as COVID-19 deaths continue to soar, Mail Online reports.
The single-decker buses can carry four patients each and have been kitted out with all vital equipment including infusion pumps, oxygen masks and monitors.
Bus firm Go-Ahead converted the buses in the hope the NHS could use them to transport patients to the newly-reopened Nightingale hospital at London’s ExCeL centre.
NHS hospitals in London have been under enormous pressure since the emergence of a highly-infectious mutant Covid strain which spread rapidly across the country.
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Medics have reported having to ‘triage’ patients to decide who should get critical care – with many fearing the situation could worsen.
It is hoped that the buses will help take away some of the strain, but they are not accredited to the NHS.
Seats have been removed to maximize space in the electric vehicles, which the firm hopes will be fully-staffed by PPE-clad NHS doctors and nurses and St John Ambulance first-aid volunteers who have all had a Covid vaccine.
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The onboard equipment is charged through the buses’ batteries, The Guardian reports.
All medics will be from the Specialist Retrieval and Intensive Care Transfer Service (Sprint).
The service was set up at the start of the pandemic to transport seriously-ill patients from one intensive care unit to another to ensure none were overwhelmed.
The ExCeL centre in Newham, East London, has been set up as a giant mass vaccination centre and facility for patients recovering from coronavirus.
An NHS London spokesperson said: ‘These buses have not been commissioned by the NHS.’
The UK today recorded another 1,290 deaths, up 3.4 per cent on the same day last week.
Despite the country’s ever-growing death toll, Department of Health statistics also showed the UK’s second wave is continuing to fade away as a result of the lockdown.
Officials recorded a further 37,892 infections today, down more than a fifth on last Thursday.
And Cambridge University researchers had estimated that the R rate – the average number of people each infected person passes the disease onto – may have dipped to 0.6 in London and the South East.
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