The network of emergency Nightingale hospitals established last year to handle the surge in coronavirus cases is to close from next month.

Set up last spring amid fears that the NHS might be overwhelmed, the temporary hospitals in England were largely not needed.

There were seven Nightingale hospitals built in England, starting in April 2020 with the 4,000-bed facility at London's ExCel centre. Another was set up in Belfast, while Scotland and Wales had their own temporary hospitals. The NHS has labelled them as the ‘ultimate insurance policy’.

An NHS spokesman said that as the health service learned more about coronavirus and how to successfully treat it, existing hospitals were able to adapt to increase critical care capacity.

Yorkshire's 500-bed hospital will close next month without treating a single patient. It will operate as a testing centre until then.

London's ExCel centre, which will remain open for vaccinations, treated 20 patients during the first wave of the pandemic. It reopened in January and was used to treat non-coronavirus patients to free up beds for a surge in coronavirus cases and other very seriously ill people.