Specialist Covid-19 assessment facilities open at West Suffolk Hospital
New specially designed testing and assessment areas have been built.
A new 10-bed facility at the Bury St Edmunds hospital has opened this week and is designed specifically for treating people with Covid-19 or other infectious diseases.
The extension to the emergency department features separate treatment rooms designed to allow for the isolation of patients and a new dedicated resuscitation area.
There's also 'negative pressure' facilities to help make treatments that might involve the spread of aerosol droplets which can spread disease, safer.
The hospital says this new area has been made possible by £2.7m Government funding which has helped move office and storage areas elsewhere.
A second phase of improvements is also planned to improve the transfer of patients arriving by ambulance - that work is underway.
Those works involve space for up to eight patients, two treatment rooms, and changing and rest facilities for staff - it's due to open in the summer.
West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust director of resources Craig Black said: "While we are seeing levels of Covid-19 in the community beginning to fall, we still have new patients arriving every day with this very serious disease.
"The space is fully flexible, so we can also safely use this extra assessment space for other patients attending our emergency department."