Fall in number of Covid-19 patients in North Yorkshire hospitals
As of yesterday there were 122 Covid-positive patients
The number of Covid-19 patients in hospitals across North Yorkshire has fallen in the last seven days.
As of yesterday, there were 122 Covid-positive patients in North Yorkshire’s hospitals, a drop of 10 on this time last week.
The number of patients in intensive care, however, has gone up by six to 26.
In an update given to the North Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum today Amanda Bloor, the accountable officer for the North Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Group said that the number of patients at Scarborough Hospital had dropped by two to seven.
In her written update to the forum Mrs Bloor outlined the next steps for the vaccination program, stating:
“On Monday the Government announced that people aged 12 to 15 in England will be offered one dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, following advice from the four UK Chief Medical Officers.
“The NHS, working with school immunisation teams, will begin offering the vaccine to 12-15 year olds once the operational plans are finalised. Other teenagers can continue to use the established routes to access a vaccine.
“We have also had additional announcements about the Covid-19 booster programme this week.
“Boosters will be one dose and should not be administered any sooner than six months after the second dose of the vaccination.
“Boosters will be offered to everyone who was eligible for a vaccine under the first phase of the vaccine programme – cohorts 1-9 as identified by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) and they will be offered in sequential order starting with cohort 1.”
Ahead of a possible return to some restrictions this winter Mrs Bloor said that taking steps including getting the flu jab was vitally important.
She added: “Winter is always the NHS’s busiest time of year and we expect that to be the same this year.
“In addition, there are still Covid patients in our hospitals, we are working together to address the waiting lists which have arisen due to the pandemic and we also still have full Covid-measures in place including, social distancing, across all of our healthcare settings to keep patients and staff safe and ensure robust infection prevention control.
“The flu vaccination programme is one of the ways we can help protect hospital capacity this winter by helping people stay healthy and well and out of hospital.
“We would like to see as many people as possible get the flu vaccination this winter and will share information through the months ahead to support people with this.”