MORE details have emerged over how the Apollo Hotel will be used during the coronavirus pandemic.

As previously reported, the four-star hotel, on Aldermaston Road Roundabout, will be revamped into a 125-bed facility to help support Basingstoke hospital as it deals with the coronavirus crisis.

Now, Alex Whitfield, chief executive of Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, has revealed that the new hospital will be used to monitor patients recovering from the virus, with a more of a care home setting, and not used for patients who are acutely unwell.

"Hampshire County Council have stood up the Apollo hotel in Basingstoke and Holiday Inn in Winchester," she told the Gazette. "It’s more of a care home type setting, there won’t be doctors on site 24/7, there’s social care providers and nurse support.

"The idea is that these are for people who, maybe if there is the right level of care around, could have gone home but actually there aren’t enough domiciliary carers so they can move to the hotel for the rehab and recovery end of their stay.

"They won’t be acutely unwell, but it all adds to the capacity and making sure we move people out of the acute hospitals when they don’t need to be there any more."

The hospital have increased capacity in recent weeks. As well as the nationwide decreased on planned, non-urgent surgery, chemotherapy and oncology services have moved from Basingstoke and Winchester hospitals to BMI Sarum Road, a private hospital in Winchester.

The wards that now lie empty have been transformed into bed spaces, and are ready to be used if required.

It's because of this increase in capacity that a Nightingale Hospital, like the one which opened recently at the ExCeL centre in London, is not required. However, Ms Whitfield said that it had been considered.

"There was quite a lot of work going on in the last couple of weeks on the ExCeL model, whether we are going to do something similar in the Basingstoke and Winchester area.

"The current modelling would suggest that we’re not going to require this at the current stage."

It comes after the Trust revealed that they were currently treating 95 Covid-19 positive patients, as of yesterday morning.