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A large drive-thru centre for assessing potential coronavirus patients has opened this morning.
The facility at Estuary View Medical Centre in Whitstable has the capacity to see up to 100 patients a day - but this could increase.
Dr John Ribchester, senior and executive partner at Whitstable Medical Practice, told KentOnline: "There are patients going through it now. We have informed NHS 111 that it is live, so it is open to referrals not just from GPs in Whitstable but people who call 111 who are given appointments to attend here.
"We have had some trial runs since last Thursday because we wanted to make sure our systems, safety and decontamination were all correct."
Dr Ribchester previously explained the hot site is not a “pitch up-and-be-seen facility”. Patients are asked to phone NHS 111 or their general practice to book an appointment.
There are four categories of patients potentially with Covid-19:
1. Those who aren’t badly affected who are asked to self isolate.
2a. Patients who need a home visit from a team wearing personal protection equipment.
2b. Patients who are ill enough to need a face-to-face consultation but well enough to travel who will be invited to come along to the drive-thru facility.
3. Patients who are so severely ill they need to go to hospital for oxygen and/or ventilation.
He also explained previously how the centre will work.
“You’ll be met by two small portacabins like the ones you pass through when you cross the Channel Tunnel - they’re check-in booths really," he said.
“Assuming you have an appointment, you then proceed to the area which will be covered in sheeting and scaffolding. There will be four lanes and people will be seen in their cars.
“If they need to be looked at they go to one of the portacabins and are seen in a - quite frankly - fairly sparse room. They will be examined and then the room will be decontaminated.”
The number of staff will flex with demand - but to start with there will be two teams of four. Each team will have one GP and three other clinicians.
There will be volunteers doing traffic marshalling and there will be receptionists in check-in booths.
But there are no testing facilities on the site.
Dr Ribchester added: "If community testing becomes available then we could use one lane for this. Sadly, at the moment there is not testing available to test members of the public. I wish there was, but there just isn’t.
"If Matt Hancock’s promise of ramping up testing to 100,000 a day by the end of the month becomes good, then we may be able to test in the future at various hot sites."
