How full are Northamptonshire's hospitals ahead of second coronavirus lockdown?

The number of patients across both of Northamptonshire's acute care wards has been doubling week-on-week over the past month.

Ahead of the second coronavirus lockdown set to begin this Thursday (November 5), the director of public health for Northamptonshire Lucy Wightman has shed light on how full the county's two general hospitals are currently.

At the time of speaking during the press conference on Friday (October 30), Ms Wightman shared that across Northampton and Kettering General Hospital:

■ 6.6 per cent of its combined 1,300 beds were occupied by Covid-positive patients, amounting to about 86 patients.

■ Three Covid-positive patients were on invasive ventilators

■ 19 non-Covid-positive patients were on invasive ventilators

■ Nine Covid-positive patients were on non-invasive ventilators.

■ 64 Covid-positive patients were using general beds without any kind of ventilator.

■ 85 per cent of general beds were filled, amounting to 957 patients.

Additionally, Ms Wightman said that over the past four weeks the number of patients across the two hospitals' acute wards had doubled week-on week, from 13 patients on October 8, to 76 patients on October 30.

Ms Wightman told the press conference a risk in the number of Covid patients rising was because it "eats away" at the beds available for people in hospital for other types of care.

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.”