November 19, 2020 5.26 pm This story is over 40 months old

Over 400 COVID-19 patients in Greater Lincolnshire hospitals

Numbers more than doubled in a week
| Photo: Halfpoint / Adobe Stock

There are currently 415 patients with coronavirus in hospitals in Greater Lincolnshire — more than ever since the start of the pandemic.

United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust (ULHT) confirmed that it currently has 230 patients with COVID-19 in Lincoln and Boston — a 142% increase from last week’s 95 patients.

Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust said as of Thursday morning it has 159 COVID-19 positive patients: 85 at Grimsby, 70 at Scunthorpe and four at Goole. Of those, 12 are in ICU, five at Grimsby and seven at Scunthorpe.

The Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust currently has 12 COVID-19 positive patients across its mental health wards.

Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust said as of 5pm on November 18 it has 14 COVID-19 patients in its community hospitals.

The latest situation at ULHT

Last week ULHT said it had 95 COVID positive patients, which was approaching the wave one peak figure figure of 104 from April.

This figure had risen to 221 by the morning of Thursday, November 19. At around 4pm the same day the trust confirmed the number had increased again to 230.

Andrew Morgan, Chief Executive at ULHT, told BBC Radio Lincolnshire on Thursday that the number had “gone up quicker than we might well have expected” and it’s been “going up gradually over the last couple of weeks”.

He said: “We expected some increase, but obviously a rise of that scale does cause us operational complexities, hence the internal ‘critical incident’ we had over the weekend. They came out of it on Monday, but we are still under significant pressure at the moment.”

He added that it can be a combination of people who are admitted because they have coronavirus, but also other patients who are tested after being admitted.

Meanwhile, 46 patients have died after testing positive for coronavirus at hospitals run by ULHT, which is 20% of the total number of COVID-19 deaths at the Trust’s sites since the start of the pandemic, according to BBC Radio Lincolnshire.