Number of Covid patients in Scarborough Hospital trebles in past seven days

There are now nine patients in Scarborough with the virus compared to just three last week.

Across hospitals in North Yorkshire there are 136 patients now receiving treatment for coronavirus, a rise of 24.

Sixteen patients are in intensive care.

Amanda Bloor accountable officer of the North Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Group, told a meeting of the North Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum this morning that health bosses were starting to see a drop in the number of young people coming forward to get vaccinated.

She said: “The vaccination program is now open to all age cohorts and is particularly focusing now on the younger cohorts, but we are seeing a slight drop off in the rate of vaccine uptake in the younger cohort.

“It is really important that we continue to encourage everyone to come forward for a vaccination.

“I am wondering with the easing of restrictions from July 19 it is potentially understandable that younger people may feel that there is no advantage now in getting vaccinated but we are seeing that there are some younger people in hospital now with Covid who are actually quite poorly.

“If you are infected there is also the risk of passing on the virus to anyone who is more vulnerable, particularly older people, and also the risk of developing long Covid so I would continue to urge everyone to come forward for the vaccination.”

Mrs Bloor added that while hospital admissions remain well below previous levels seen during the pandemic any increase would impact on the ability to offer other services.

She said: “We all know that GP services are very busy and that hospital capacity is reduced when they are treating Covid patients, particularly as we are trying to get through planned procedures and continue to work on the waiting lists.

“So, if the number of patients with Covid in our hospitals continues to rise it could have an impact on our ability to carry out those planned procedures.

“We are not seeing that significantly at the moment but we do need to just keep an eye on those numbers.

“We are also seeing increased pressure and demand across the wider system, and that includes accident and emergency departments, the ambulance service and also NHS 111.”