New figures show fewer Covid-19 patients at local hospitals
A THIRD of all patients who died at Derby and Burton’s hospitals in the past few months were victims of Covid-19, new figures have revealed.
Just over 500 people have died at the hospitals after contracting the disease – including four members of staff.
But the hospitals have successfully treated and discharged more than 1,000 patients who had the virus.
And there are now fewer Covid-positive patients at Derby and Burton’s hospitals than at any time since March.
The University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust says it now has fewer than 55
Covid-19 patients but stresses that the pandemic is “not over yet”.
This is less than a quarter of the number the trust had at its peak – 243 patients on April 7.
The most Covid-related deaths came the next day on April 8 with 25 deaths at the trust.
These figures have been revealed for the first time in the trust’s board papers – due to be discussed today.
The organisation has also published charts showing the number of Covid patients it had as a whole during the course of the pandemic – alongside the number in intensive care, fighting for their lives.
These charts also break down the number of inpatients and intensive care patients by those in Royal Derby Hospital and those in Queen’s Hospital in Burton.
The trust has previously said it was unable to provide figures for the number of Covid patients in intensive care.
It also stopped providing details on the number of staff who had tested positive, negative or inconclusive for the virus.
The charts show that for the best part of a month – late March to mid April – there were 200 or more Covid-positive patients in the trust. This dropped to lower than 100 by mid-may.
The trust had more than 20 Covid patients in intensive care for much of the same period. By the start of May this had fallen to 10 or fewer patients.
The organisation’s peak in Covid admissions on April 7 fell on the same day it invited the Local Democracy Reporting Service to the Royal Derby Hospital for an interview with health chiefs.
At the time, trust leaders said the peak was a number of weeks away and it had more than 200 Covid inpatients and 30 in intensive care, of which three were hospital staff.
This was just two weeks into the UK lockdown, which was triggered on March 23.
The trust has also now revealed that the first member of its staff, a Queen’s Hospital employee, tested positive for the virus on March 15, the day after it stopped the automatic right for families and friends to visit loved ones in hospital.
On March 16, the following day and a week before lockdown, the trust told employees that those at risk would need to self-isolate or redeploy to another role.
As lockdown was brought in on March 23 the trust had 57 Covid positive patients and 15 had died.
In the next two weeks the trust would hit its peak of nearly 250 Covid patients and 150 deaths.
The trust says “we must all remain alert to the dangers the virus continues to pose, and the ever-present prospect of a new wave of confirmed cases”.
It also says there is “uncertainty as to the timing and scale of any potential second wave”.
This comes after Gavin Boyle, the trust’s chief executive, said in May that it was a “big leap” to assume a second Covid-19 peak would happen. The trust then sought to deny Mr Boyle had said this.
In total, the trust has had more than 1,500 Covid-19 positive patients.
More than 1,000 patients have been successfully discharged after making recoveries.
However, as of July 13, 518 patients have died at the trust after contracting Covid-19 – the fifth highest of all NHS trusts in England. This was a third of all deaths at the trust during the pandemic. In May, the
last time the trust provided figures for the number of staff that had tested Covid positive, nearly 650 employees had reportedly had the virus.
The trust will no longer provide these figures.
It says its peak in staff absence fell on April 3 with 1,700 staff away from the trust.
Among these were 500 employees shielding either for their own health risks or to protect a vulnerable member of their household.
A further 430 had needed to self-isolate because they either had Covid symptoms or someone in their household did.
Four trust staff have died after contracting Covid-19: Amged El-hawrani, ear, nose and throat consultant, aged 55; Manjeet Singh Riyat, A&E consultant, aged 52; Eileen Landers, cleaner, aged 67; and Norman Austria, healthcare assistant, aged 61.