Coronavirus wards to be built at HRI as precaution
TRUST NEEDS TO BE ‘OVER-PREPARED’
TWO new wards will be built at Hull Royal Infirmary to care for patients who have tested positive for coronavirus.
Chris Long, chief executive of Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, revealed the news in a video posted by the trust on Vimeo.
In the video, Mr Long also apologised to patients who have had their appointments and surgeries moved because of the “massive” impact of coronavirus on NHS services.
Mr Long described the past four months as a “rollercoaster” for the trust but says there are now fewer patients in hospital with the virus than there were previously.
However, plans have been made for the trust if Hull and the East Riding were to suffer a second wave of coronavirus.
Mr Long said: “We’re ready for that and all of our planning is based upon the assumption that we will see a second wave and hopefully if it comes, it won’t be as big as the first, but clearly my big concern is that we go into winter, and will have a lot of winter flu and Covid and all of the other viruses we expect at that time of year so our planning for this winter is going to have to be a different order of magnitude to what we have seen previously.”
Part of a long-term plan includes the construction of two new wards, which will be built at the back of the tower block at Hull Royal Infirmary.
Mr Long said: “We intend to use those for respiratory patients with Covid and hopefully we won’t need anything like that capacity, but we just need to be over-prepared.”
He said that the overall impact coronavirus has had so far on our area is “absolutely massive” and added that due to the need to maintain social distancing and staff needing to change PPE productivity within Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust has gone “right down.”
Mr Long said it will “take years to recover.”
At the beginning of lockdown, everything but urgent life and limb-saving treatment was cancelled while the Trust prepared for coronavirus. Usually, the trust sees 3,000 outpatients every day.
Mr Long said: “We can’t see the volume of patients we normally do and I’m afraid the consequence is that people are going to have to wait longer for operations and other procedures.”
The chief executive apologised to patients who will experience delays in treatment due to coronavirus.
He said: “I am really, really sorry. None of us want to see people in pain, want to see people suffering or having to wait.
“We are doing everything we can to try and get through the work, we are doing everything we can to change the way that we do things and we’re looking at how we can work with partners and do things differently and we are absolutely focused on getting you treated as quickly as we possibly can.”
Mr Long praised staff at Hull’s hospitals, saying: “I couldn’t be prouder of them.”