SOCIAL media videos filmed inside a secure area of Northern Ireland's specialist Nightingale hospital by a stranger have sparked an NHS probe.
The Irish News has learned that the footage, which appeared on Facebook this week, led to senior management at the Belfast health trust sanctioning an urgent investigation into the security breach.
Multiple posts show the man - who is filming on his mobile phone - walking through different levels of the 11-storey facility on the Belfast City Hospital site and entering electronically locked areas which require a 'swipe pass' card.
A trust spokesman said it was aware of the videos but would not be commenting on them.
However, trust sources say the breach is being taken "very seriously" after the posts emerged on Monday morning and that an internal investigation was ordered immediately as the individual "definitely required a pass to get in".
The development comes a month after leaked photographs from inside the Nightingale showed some wards being used as storage spaces, amid claims others remain unopened due to severe nursing shortages.
Whistleblowers contacted The Irish News with images from the City Hospital's main tower block which they claim exposed the impact of poor workforce planning over the past decade and cuts to student nursing places.
Cardboard boxes, drip stands, trolleys and chairs were crammed into ward spaces where patients should be.
A total of 15 intensive care nurses have left the trust in the past six months at a time when multiple nursing jobs cannot be filled.
In the Facebook videos, the man walks through the hospital and comments on empty wards.
The building in south Belfast was transformed into a regional Nightingale facility during the first Covid surge and has the capacity to treat more than 150 patients.
However, there are concerns about the low numbers of patients currently in the enormous hospital which is normally used for gynaecology operations as well as cardiology, urology and dermatology procedures.
Many of the north's other major hospitals are operating over capacity since October due to coronavirus and winter pressures.
Surgeries carried out in the City hospital were either suspended or transferred to the Royal Victoria Hospital as well the South West Acute Hospital in Enniskillen.
Kidney transplants were also carried out at the City but were suspended last month with no date for re-commencement.
A Belfast trust spokesman confirmed there were 13 Covid patients in ICU in Nightingale yesterday with a further 12 recovering in a hospital 'step down' ward. All are Belfast trust patients.
A decision to 'stand down' the facility can only be made by The Department of Health as it remains a regional Nightingale despite only caring for patients from one trust.
