12 patients currently in Northamptonshire hospitals with Covid-19

There are a dozen patients with Covid-19 in Northamptonshire’s two hospitals.

Chief executive of the county’s clinical commissioning group, Toby Sanders, gave an update on the number of covid positive patients at Kettering and Northampton general hospitals this morning saying currently there were ‘very low numbers’ in the two acute hospitals but that the increase in community transmissions would inevitably lead to more admissions.

He said: “According to the daily dashboard there are 12 patients across the two acutes who are covid positive and another 20 or so that are query covid. If you go back to the peak of the first wave in May that number was running closer to 200. We are in a decent place but the infection, prevention and control measures inevitably means that throughput and capacity is down on what we are normally able to run at and that is presenting real challenges in terms of restoring services and getting back on top of things like elective care and elective capacity.”

He added: “We are working with multi-agency partners in order to put in place and strengthen our plans for what we are going into locally, which is seeing an increase in cases of community transmissions, that will almost inevitably translate into increased pressure back into healthcare services.”

So far, 531 people have tragically lost their lives in Northamptonshire due to Covid-19. There have been just over 5,000 recorded cases and the large towns of Corby, Kettering and Northampton have all been on the government watch list in recent weeks due to rapidly rising positive case numbers – although they are now no longer classed as areas of concern.

The rise in cases led to more testing capacity across the county, with walk-in slots available for residents and at one point people being advised by the director of public health to get tested even if they were concerned about the virus, however due to lab capacity issues the available testing slots in the county have now decreased.

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