Swansea's Bay Field hospital is closing two years after the Covid pandemic sparked its sudden creation. The facility was intended to free up space in hospitals by transferring Covid and non-Covid patients who were out of danger to a facility at Llandarcy at first and then, as they recovered further, to the Bay before returning home. However, it was never actually used for its original purpose, but instead ended up as a mass vaccination centre.
The hospital was built from scratch extremely quickly after scientific modelling which showed the levels of infection which were overwhelming hospitals in Europe would produce the same level of hospitalisation in Wales, and eventually became the place hundreds of thousands of people received their Covid-19 vaccinations. It has also provided a venue for antibody testing, blood tests, nurse training and an outpatients' service for people with Long Covid. We visited the hospital in February when the minister for health and social services, Eluned Morgan, visited and spoke to some patients living with long Covid. You can recap what they had to say in a previous article here.
With decommissioning work due to begin at the end of July, the beds will be given new homes, hospital equipment will be shared out between other hospitals and community services, and medical services based at Bay Field Hospital will be relocated. Blood tests will be the last service to leave the building, with the last day of blood tests being next Friday, July 22. You can get the biggest Swansea news stories straight to your inbox with our newsletter.
Read more: Visiting suspended at Swansea and Neath Port Talbot hospitals as Covid cases surge
The Bay Field Hospital site, based within the Bay Studios complex, once housed a manufacturing plant for the rear axles of Ford cars and vans but had been empty for some years before the pandemic began. In the spring of 2020 the site was identified as a good location for a field hospital - with the landlord of Bay Studios Roy Thomas handing over the building to the health board rent-free for the first 16 months. A second field hospital was created a few miles away at Llandarcy Sports Academy.
Bay Field Hospital was constructed by Swansea Councils building services team who delivered the hospital "on time and on budget," Swansea Bay University Health Board said. A spokeswoman explained: "At the time [Spring 2020], hospitals in Italy and Spain were being overwhelmed by large numbers of seriously ill Covid patients and scientific modelling suggested the tidal wave of infection would hit the UK’s shores within weeks.
"The NHS had to make extra beds available, with modelling at the time indicating that more than 1,000 may be needed in the Swansea Bay area. Outpatient departments and operating theatres in existing hospitals were transformed into makeshift intensive care units and wards, but there still wasn’t enough space for all the beds the modelling suggested would be required.
"So the health board’s primary, community and therapy services (PCTS) group was tasked with creating the field hospitals alongside the local councils, the military and private contractors in an unprecedented £18m project."
Sally Bloomfield, who lead the Bay Field Hospital project, recalled: "As an Allied Health Professional (clinicians who are not doctors or nurses) I thrive on problem solving and being given a challenge. In the beginning I was also quite scared because it was really out of my comfort zone and nothing I ever expected to be asked to do in my career.”
Discussing the transformation of the building, which initially had no access to the mains sewer network and no electricity or water supply, into a fully-operational field hospital, she added: "We would say it was from handbags and glad rags to hard hats and steel toe-capped boots. It was exciting, scary and a huge privilege. An absolutely fascinating process. We just had to do what we had to do – decisions had to be taken then and there.
"Everyone just came together and somehow, between us all, we achieved what was needed. There was a common goal, a common objective and everybody knew what that was, from the labourers and contractors to the health board staff who helped out. It was a mammoth task and collaboration at its very best. Roy Thomas [landlord of the building] was brilliant, handing over the building for us to use with no hesitation."
In just 31 days, from April 6, 2020 to May 7, 2020, the Bay Field Hospital was constructed, containing five wards and a total of 420 beds. All wards were named after Welsh castles to symbolise "protection of the public". And by the end of June 2022, a further seven wards with beds were added and in the October, beds from Llandarcy were transferred to Bay Field Hospital as the Llandarcy field hospital closed.
Until recently Sally and her team were required to keep 330 beds on "standby" for activation at 72 hours’ notice, Swansea Bay University Health Board has explained. But thankfully, the hospital beds at Llandarcy and Bay Field Hospital were not required, as the extra capacity provided in Morriston, Singleton and Neath Port Talbot hospitals was enough.
Now 350 of the Bay Field Hospital's beds, which are not suitable for use in the health board’s main hospitals, have been donated to good causes including a refugee camp in Moldova for people fleeing the war in Ukraine, to families hosting Ukrainian refugees, and to local families in need. The rest will be repurposed or donated as necessary.
"Had we not built the field hospital and needed it, that would have been a travesty. It would have been catastrophic," Sally added. "At the time, when we were really living in the epicentre of all the modelling and planning, it was very real that these places were going to be needed.
"People were dying. There was no vaccine on the horizon. But while we haven’t used it as a field hospital. It has been used for lots of other things."
By December 2020, the Bay Field Hospital had become the home of a new Mass Vaccination Centre for Swansea and the surrounding area and first offered the Pfizer vaccine to health and social care staff. Ultimately, over the last 18 months, more than 400,000 people aged five and up received their first, second and booster doses at Bay Field Hospital, one of several vaccination centres in the city.
Reflecting on the number of vaccinations provided at the Hospital, patient flow coordinator Gemma Thomas said: "Everyone has been like a family here through such a tough time. We have stuck it out." Clinical lead in the vaccination programme, Rebecca Maus added: "It’s been something we will look back on as an incredible achievement."
READ NEXT
- 'People think I'm pregnant but I've got a hereditary disease which has left my kidney functioning at 9%'
- 'Kind' young mum killed in house inferno after fire started by child playing with lighter
- Young dad tragically died after his car left road and hit trees
- Children 'threatened with detention' for wearing PE kit during heatwave, parents claim
- RSPCA issues statement to Royal Welsh show urging 'absolute priority' for animal welfare during heatwave
