The attention of course is now on the shining lights and brand new halls of Mater Dei. But back at St Luke’s the empty halls are eerie, somewhat like a much-loved house suddenly empty.

A week into the migration to Mater Dei, there are only relatively few patients left at St Luke’s. Some are considered social cases and are waiting to be transferred to government homes. Others are destined to join the rehabilitation facility, which, after the refurbishment of Karin Grech Hospital, will see another migration, that from Zammit Clapp Hospital for Geriatric Medicine, which provides a service according to each patient’s medical condition and needs regarding assessment, management and general rehabilitation.

If being transferred to a new hospital may have proved traumatic for some of St Luke’s Hospital patients, it proved to be no less traumatic for those patients who were left behind.

They now form part of St Luke’s new role – that of being a long-term rehabilitation facility, which will include the services provided by Zammit Clapp Hospital.

But the new team of nurses and doctors that have come in are, at least apparently, stressed out by the move, as are the patients.

Basically, the former Zammit Clapp medical team, which was already stretched caring for patients at Zammit Clapp, now finds itself operating both at Zammit Clapp and at St Luke’s looking after patients who were left there.

On their part, they are telling patients and their families they lack medicines and other equipment and that there are too few of them to cater for all the patients there.

These are, undoubtedly, early days, and some things will be sorted out in time. But time is exactly what these patients do not have.