Sunderland's Nightingale Hospital, one of seven emergency sites set up to take coronavirus patients, has now closed.

Having opened in May 2020, the 460-bed facility was built in a converted industrial unit neighbouring Nissan's giant car-making complex. The facility repeatedly cost at least £23.5 million and was intended to help cope with cases if existing hospitals were overwhelmed, but no Covid-19 patients were admitted.

The hospital was then transformed into a mass vaccination centre and more than 275,000 people were jabbed there.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokeswoman has said that equipment from the NHS Nightingales will be redistributed to other hospitals or put in storage ‘for use in future crises’.