NHS confirms two more Covid-19 victims at Kettering General Hospital

NHS England today confirmed two more Covid-19 patients have died at Kettering General Hospital in recent days.

Figures revealed in a daily bulletin showed the fatalities at the Rothwell Road site on Sunday and Monday this week.

That takes the total to four at KGH with a further nine at Northampton General Hospital since a 'second wave' of the pandemic began hitting the the county.

NHS analysts collate information on patients who have died in hospitals in England and either tested positive for Covid-19 or where no positive test result was received but Covid-19 is mentioned on a death certificate.

These latest deaths were among 163 confirmed today by NHS England which occurred in hospitals between October 23 and yesterday October 27.

Delays in reporting and registration can mean lags of up to four days or even more in deaths being added to the official tally.

Today's sad news follows previous announcements of two deaths at Kettering on October 7 and on October 12 — the first linked to coronavirus in the town since August 25

We revealed last week a hospital source had confirmed the hospital's alert level has been raised from two to three — one below the most serious.

The Operational Pressures Levels Framework level three is implemented when there has been a 'significant deterioration' in A&E four-hour targets, when ambulance handovers taking less than an hour is 'significantly compromised', when there is 'significant unexpected reduced staffing' numbers or when there are serious capacity pressures on beds.

Northamptonshire remains in Tier One as a medium risk area under the Government's National Covid Alert system.

The county's Oversight Board is due to meet tomorrow (Thursday) to study the latest figures on transmission and hospital cases and decide if a move into level two — which would put a stop to people from different households meeting indoors — is likely.

Figures given at last Friday's weekly media briefing revealed 40 patients were being treated for Covid-19 in the county's two acute hospitals.

Hospital CEO Simon Weldon said then: "At the moment the hospitals still have very relatively low numbers but we're not complacent about that."

Covid-19 was linked to 311 deaths in Northampton and 220 in Kettering between March and August.

A further 151 deaths in county care homes have been connected with Covid-19 by the Care Quality Commission, although the most recent was on August 17.