The Scottish Government has said it has no plans to build field hospitals to treat patients with coronavirus.
Dr Margaret Harris from the World Health Organisation said at the weekend that field hospitals may be required to treat patients and contain the coronavirus outbreak.
She said the British Army had successfully built field hospitals in Sierra Leone in 2014 to help combat the deadly ebola virus.
This is the sort of planning you should be thinking about
Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show she said: “Certainly the army has great experience of putting up field hospitals. I’ve worked on Ebola and I’ve seen what the British army can do. It’s quite incredible.
“So this is the sort of planning you should be thinking about. Can you set up a field hospital? Where do you set it up? What equipment have you got and what staff have you got and how can you protect everybody working in those conditions?”
But a Scottish Government spokesman said it would seek to “maximise” the capacity of existing hospitals – and NHS buildings not currently in use – before it considers the creation of any temporary hospitals.
He said: “It is important to stress that the vast majority of people who may become infected will have mild symptoms and will not require hospital treatment.
“We are firstly seeking to maximise the use of existing NHS capacity including buildings and staff.
“That capacity may also need to be bolstered through measures such as postponing non-urgent hospital procedures, bringing in staff who have left service and making use of facilities not currently in use, but we are not currently planning on building temporary facilities.”
Around 350 “field hospitals” have been set up in Italy to test patients who are displaying the symptoms of coronavirus, also known as COVID-19.
The facilities are set up outside hospitals in order to prevent the spread of infection inside the building itself.
A “drive through” test centre for coronavirus has already been set up outside Raigmore Hospital in Inverness.
There are now 23 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Scotland.
