Fewer patients are catching Covid in Basingstoke hospital

A total of 84 people caught the virus in one of Hampshire Hospitals Foundation Trust’s hospitals – Basingstoke, Andover, or Winchester - during January, compared to 144 in December.

In a report to the trust’s board of directors, chief executive Alex Whitfield said: “While the number of Covid positive patients in our hospitals is falling, we still have over 100 patients at time of writing and our critical care services are operating considerably above their normal capacity. This is placing demands on staffing across the hospitals.”

The up-to-date figures for January show that 10 per cent of all those with Covid in one of HHFT hospitals caught it while there, with 770 having contracted the virus before being admitted to hospital.

In December last year it was reported that the trust had the highest acquired infection rate of coronavirus across England, with nearly 40 per cent of its Covid-19 patients catching the virus while being treated for another illness.

At the time of writing the report, the trust was caring for 120 patients who had tested positive for Covid – 67 at Basingstoke, 53 in Winchester and none in Andover.

It said hospital admissions were steadily declining after starting 2021 with “far more patients in our hospitals than wave 1”.

It added that there were some “early encouraging signs of vaccine impact” with fewer patients aged over 80 being admitted with Covid.

A total of 7,557 hospital staff have now received their first vaccine, which represents 84 per cent of the trust’s total staff.

The report detailed staffing issues on C3 and C4 wards where a Covid-19 outbreak was declared. The trust added the risk of the spread of Covid-19 to its risk register, following a number of “outbreaks and cases of hospital-acquired Covid-19”.

Dr Nicki Hutchinson, consultant microbiologist and medical director for family and clinical support services said: “Everyone in the NHS is continuing on a steep learning curve, and in the last month there have been significantly fewer cases at our hospitals than reported last month, with 84 cases in January where it is either probable or definite that the case was acquired in hospital.

“In the same month, our staff also worked tirelessly to care for the 770 patients who came into our hospitals from the wider community and tested positive for Coronavirus.

“Thanks to the hard work of our staff we are seeing fewer instances of transmission in our hospitals and the number of cases at HHFT are not above the regional average.”

She said it is not always possible to determine how cases acquired in hospital occurred, but that each is investigated, adding: “At Hampshire Hospitals we have taken a range of measures including tighter visiting restrictions, increased testing for patients (we now test on day one, three and five of any non-elective admission and again every five days thereafter), installing advanced air scrubbers to support ventilation and invested heavily in technology so as to be able to offer virtual appointments wherever appropriate.

“We also ask staff to test themselves twice a week using lateral flow testing kits and are continuing to operate a rigorous and thorough cleaning regime across all our sites to help ensure any risk of transmission is kept to an absolute minimum.”