Number of Covid-19 positive patients at Salisbury District Hospital fallen significantly
They reached their highest levels ever during this latest lockdown
Stacey Hunter, CEO of Salisbury District Hospital, has said that she cannot put into words how proud and impressed she is by all of her staff after a period of "intense pressure".
This latest lockdown has been the hardest and busiest one for our NHS Trust, with the number of positive patients and the numbers of deaths reaching peak levels.
On January 20th there were 188 in-patients with Covid-19, that's dropped to just 8 as of yesterday morning (Thursday 11th March).
Stacey told Greatest Hits Radio that this past year has been unlike anything she's ever experienced working in the NHS:
"Certainly our experiences during January were really tough and I think probably, as I talked about at the time to the community, we treated four times as many people as we had at the height of the first peak back in last March/April time. Really thankfully we are starting to see significant reductions in the number we're caring for and it's good we've got an improving situation.
Underneath every number we've got real people with families and friends and unfortunately we've had significant numbers of people die from Covid so it's really encouraging that disease is impacting our communities much less than it was a few weeks ago.
It's really tough to put into words how proud of my staff I am. I've worked in the NHS for 34 years, but relatively new to Salisbury, but I am blown away by their efforts and what they've been abel to do and just when you think they can't give any more they do and we have had colleagues who have, as individuals and as teams, just put in enormous, incredible effort to make sure patients were able to receive safe care and be looked after at a time when we were under pressure like we've never felt before. People have used lots of words to describe the last year, I can only offer on the basis of my personal experience, which is relatively long, I have never known a year like it in the NHS, but I am so proud of them."
The NHS Foundation Trust were also supported by military personnel at the hospital.
They left the site last month.
LATEST CASES
In the seven days to 5th March, there have been 175 positive cases in Wiltshire.
That's a decrease of 105 on the previous week.
This means the county's rolling rate per 100,000 population is at 35.0.
The national average is 60.3.