We must "turn off the tap" of Covid patients to protect Northamptonshire's NHS, warns Public Health chief

Hospitals in Northamptonshire could be nearly half-full with Covid-19 patients inside a month unless the national lockdown succeeds in curbing the virus' spread.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the move on Saturday night, forcing people to stay at home, shutting shops and pubs to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed by a second wave of the pandemic.

Public Health Director Lucy Wightman revealed on Friday the number of Covid-positive patients in hospitals in the county’s two acute hospitals is SIX TIMES what it was four weeks ago with 85 per cent of beds occupied.

If that number of Covid-related admissions continues at the same rate, it will hit 500 by early December and Mrs Wightman admits it is essential to “turn off the tap” of Covid-19 patients going into hospitals.

READ THIS: What the new lockdown will mean for Northamptonshire.She said: "Coronavirus is now rife across Northamptonshire and hospital admissions are increasing — and look set to continue. Concerns are growing locally that this may impact on other hospital services if something doesn’t change.

"We are starting to see the sort of pressure we have witnessed building over time in the north of England where you start to run out of capacity in acute settings which means you have to start eating away at capacity at other surgical practices such as elective surgeries and diagnostic treatments which are key to people having good outcomes.

“We still have capacity around our ventilated provision but with two relatively small general hospitals, small numbers and small increases have a significant impact on our ability to manage.

“The real challenge for our system at the moment is general bed space where more than 85 per cent capacity has already been utilised.

“We’ve talked before about flu vaccinations being one of our key tools in our toolbox this year. We need to make sure we keep as many beds available as we can so avoiding catching flu is key because that is one of big drivers of numbers across the winter and people can help by having their flu vaccine.

“We continue to work to keep bed space flowing and discharge people in a timely fashion.

“But if we can turn the tap off at the front door so we don’t have more Covid patients attending, that means we can protect what capacity we do have.”

The number of new positive tests in Northamptonshire continued to rise over the weekend with 330 cases confirmed by the Government, taking the weekly figure to 1,604 during the last seven days.

Mr Johnson announced a four-week lockdown starting on Thursday. That will be reviewed on December 2 and could be extended.

Non-essential shops, pubs, restaurants and other leisure settings will all close with staff furloughed and people banned from mixing with other households.