Coronavirus: 'Rapid' rise in York hospital admissions

The number of patients being treated for coronavirus has almost doubled within days, according to a health trust chief executive.

Simon Morritt, from York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, said York and Scarborough hospitals are now treating 135 patients with Covid-19.

That figure is higher than the 131 patients it was treating in March 2020.

Mr Morritt said he expected a "tough few weeks" and clinicians said the patients tended be younger and sicker.

"We are seeing quite a rapid rise in the number of Covid admissions," he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Mr Morritt said only a few days ago the trust was treating 70 patients with Covid-19 and he expected admissions to continue.

"We can expect to see a tough few weeks. In seven to 10 days, we would expect to see the effect of lockdown kick in."

He said the trust, which provides hospital services to about 800,000 people in York and parts of North and East Yorkshire, has a total of 150 beds for Covid patients, but more space was being created.

A meeting of York's health and wellbeing board was also told the rate of Covid cases in the city had doubled in the week between Christmas and New Year.

The city's Covid infection rate was 530 cases per 100,000 people in the week ending 2 January, the highest in the Yorkshire and Humber region.

The most recent infection rate for the whole of North Yorkshire is 399 cases per 100,000, with some areas such as Harrogate seeing case number quadruple in two weeks.

Sharon Stoltz, York's director of public health, warned the board: "The pandemic is going to get worse over the next few weeks before it gets better."

Plans to vaccinate people were in place and the only delay was in getting supplies, she added.

In South Yorkshire, Sheffield's director of public health Greg Fell told a council meeting the city's hospitals were coping.

However, he added that "a significant proportion of hospital beds have someone with Covid".

Mr Fell did not give a figure for how many patients were being treated for Covid, but said rising cases and the new variant meant there was "zero room for manoeuvre".

"The impact of the new variant remains to be seen, but I don't think I will be reporting good news because it's significantly more transmissible.

"The rates are lower in Yorkshire. For once, we are at the good end. In some parts of London, case rates are 1,200 per 100,000. Here we are in the order of 250 per 100,000," he said.

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