Northamptonshire hospitals face double whammy of staff shortages and rising Covid cases

Hospitals are starting to facing a double whammy of pressure as the number of Covid-19 cases in the county rises.

Public Health England has revealed 785 lab-confirmed positive virus tests in the county in the last three days.

Deaths of four Covid-19 patients at Northampton General Hospital were confirmed on Friday and Saturday.

Coronavirus is forcing nearly 300 staff to stay at home while Covid-positive patients now occupy around 10 per cent of beds in Northamptonshire's two acute NHS Trusts.

Kettering General Hospital raised its Operational Pressure Escalation Level to its highest level, four, and managers begged doctors to only admit new patients when absolutely necessary.

This means there is no capacity across the acute trust, there are severe ambulance delays and ambulances are unable to offload within 120 minutes, there are unexpected reduced staffing numbers, and there are severe capacity pressures on intensive care and specialist beds.

An email to staff from chief operating officer Jo Fawcus on Friday — which has been seen by the Chronicle & Echo's sister newspaper, the Northants Telegraph — said: "We are currently dealing with a rising number of patients across the hospital, partly as a result of winter pressures and rising cases of Covid-19.

"The impact this is having on our capacity is affecting our ability to care for patients in the most effective way and we have escalated to OPEL four.

"To ensure we have beds for our sickest patients, we need clinical staff to focus today and over the weekend on admission avoidance and discharged wherever it is safe to do so."

KGH chief executive, Eileen Doyle, told Friday's County Council Covid-19 media briefing that 286 of 10,000-plus staff at the two hospitals are currently off work either because they have tested positive for Covid-19 or have to self-isolate following close contact with a case.

Ms Doyle added: "There are 116 patients with Covid, which is around 10 per cent of our bed base.

"Both hospitals are busy, but it's a busy time of year and we're ordinarily busy over winter.

"We have learnt a lot and this is our second time around, although we never really stopped.

"Services are continuing. Cancer care, emergency care, and planned care is still continuing and that's different from the first time around.

"Therefore, we do ask if you have an appointment, please keep it. It's very important that we are able to treat as many people for as long as possible."