Trust that runs Ipswich Hospital had 1000 staff off with Coronavirus on "worst days"
That's around 10% of the total workforce
The CEO of the East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Trust, which manages Colchester and Ipswich Hospitals, has urged the public to remain cautious about covid, as the trust continues to be affected by the virus.
Nick Hulme told us they've been impacted by high numbers of staff testing positive, which has, in turn put a strain on some of their services: "On the worst days we've had up to 1000 people off sick in one day - about 10% of our workforce.
"That's presented real challenges... and put real pressure on the wards and and in some clinical departments.
"But the staff who haven't been off sick have being amazing - they've been so flexible and have been able to work differently and come in to do additional hours to cover those really high risk areas where sickness has had an impact."
It's not just staff who've been affected, with Nick saying patients across the two hospitals he manages also continue to be affected by coronavirus: "Today we have about 250 patients with covid across both sites and although, thankfully, they're not sick with it, it does cause significant planning, logistical and capacity problems, because if one person becomes infected in a bay, then we effectively lose the rest of that bay...
"It is still causing a significant disruption across the hospitals, and although numbers are starting to plateau, I think it's going to be several weeks before we get to back to running the hospital the way that we'd like to, with the flexibility to move patients and staff around."
As much of the public prepares for a long, Easter bank holiday weekend, the CEO's reminding people to be careful: "We still need to be very cautious. It is, at the end of the day, a deadly virus and not everybody has had the vaccine.
"We really encourage people to have the vaccine because that's providing protection to individuals...
"Covid hasn't gone away. Clearly it's not as bad as it was a year or two years ago, but it hasn't gone away, so I'd implore people to still be cautious and thoughtful about themselves, their health and that of their families and communities."