Lots of capacity for elderly

Health chiefs have insisted there is plenty of space for elderly Covid-19 patients to be treated in the region’s hospitals.

The comments follow on from newspaper reports over the weekend which suggested that staff at a care home in Falkirk were preparing to take in non-residential patients likely to be carrying the deadly virus.

The situation at Newcarron Court care home brought into focus the plans in place to tackle the ongoing spread of the pandemic into the region’s care homes - with the latest NRS report revealing that almost a third of deaths from Covid-19 occurred away from hospitals.

But at a media briefing on Monday,

NHS Forth Valley chiefs were quick to point out the capacity remaining in local hospitals and insisted any patient who required hospital treatment would be able to receive it.

Medical director Dr Andrew Murray (pictured) said:“We currently have around 55 per cent occupancy so we definitely have capacity remaining and anybody that needs to be admitted to hospital will be, there are no barriers to that.

“We are very aware of the challenges in care homes locally, but we are supporting them and are having active discussions about how we can help them if they run into issues, whether that is more education, testing or staffing.

“This is not an area we are neglecting and we are having repeated calls with our health and social care partners.”

And the health board’s director of public health, Dr Graham Foster, added: “We have 66 care homes that we look after and there are about 2000 residents in those homes.

“We have an ongoing dialogue with them and are supporting private homes with PPE; and both health and social care partnerships in Forth Valley have set up control rooms.

“We are also helping with staff because while some of these homes are private, at times where staff are self-isolating or are vulnerable, we are stepping in and sourcing additional staff to make sure staffing is robust.”

The latest update of the numbers in hospital with the virus sat at 84 as of Wednesday, with a total of 569 confirmed cases across Forth Valley.

But no patients are currently in intensive care with the virus and the directors sounded a cautiously optimistic tone about the region’s handling of the pandemic.

Dr Murray said:“The message from the last few weeks is that we haven’t seen the rise in Covid patients compared to other areas.

“This is down to really good practice from the residents in Forth Valley over social distancing and this has meant that the numbers have started to drop in the last fortnight and we haven’t seen the surge of patients going through intensive care.”