Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to become a testing site for NHS staff

There may not be any football being played at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium at the moment, but the Spurs HQ is by no means out of action. 

Tottenham announced today that it has become the first Premier League ground in the UK to set up a Covid-19 testing centre to support the NHS through this difficult time. It said equipment has been installed in the team’s gigantic new stadium ‘to operate drive-through Covid-19 testing and swabbing for NHS staff, families and their dependents.’ 

The stadium has also been repurposed and fitted out to house North Middlesex Hospital’s women’s outpatient services. It’s hoped the move will free up capacity at the hospital so more patients with Covid-19 symptoms can be treated, and mean that pregnant women will be redirected away from the hospital. 

Tottenham tweeted a floor plan of the stadium to show how it has been transformed, with the media entrance and café being used as a reception and welfare area for visitors and NHS staff, and the NFL away changing room transformed into a maternal day unit. The space where post-match TV interviews are normally conducted and the referees’ area are being used as consultation and scanning rooms and the football away dressing room will be used as a midwives clinical room and staff admin office.

In addition, the stadium basement has been turned into a distribution hub by the London Food Alliance, a scheme set up to ensure food supplies can be delivered to London’s most vulnerable people. 

A round of applause for Tottenham Hotspur, please! 

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See pictures of the ExCel centre’s transformation into the Nightingale Hospital in just under a fortnight.

Photograph: Tottenham Hotspur/ Twitter