Hospital chiefs preparing for second spike

NUNEATON’S for a second cases.

Bosses at the George Eliot Hospital have said that while they are looking to restore some suspended services, there is a ‘likelihood’ of a second spike and have plans in place to tackle it.

David Eltringham, managing director at the ‘Eliot, last week (June 2) gave a Covid-19 update to board members during a virtual hospital spike in is braced Covid-19 meeting.

He told them that the ‘Eliot can spring into action within 12 and 24 hours to cope with a second spike surge.

In a report to the board, he says: “Whilst we restore services we remain vigilant to the likelihood of a second spike and have committed to retain our ability to stand up surge capacity within a 12-24 hour period of time if required.

“We have begun to model winter demand and we know that the way we now need to run the hospital, with clear separation of Covid-19/ non-Covid-19 work, means that we will face significant capacity challenges.”

A balance has to be struck between the hospital being able to cope with the potential second wave of Covid-19 cases and restoring services needed by patients.

“During the week of 11 May 2020 we restarted endoscopy and colonoscopy services and we started to plan to bring patients requiring a wider range of elective or more urgent clinical procedures into the hospital,” Mr Altringham’s report goes on to explain.

“This involves a period of isolation and screening and therefore takes a while to restart. We still do not have a plan to restart trauma and orthopaedic work which needs to be undertaken in a hyper-clean environment and which must be separated from other surgical specialities.”

He said that the new modular ward will play a huge role in helping to bring back surgery for patients.

As previously reported, work has started to create the bespoke ward, which should be open by early autumn.