Number of covid patient-occupied hospital beds in Nottinghamshire falls below virus's peak of April last year for first time since October

For the first time since October, the number of covid patient-occupied beds in Nottinghamshire's hospitals has fallen below the virus's peak in April of last year.

That was the headline news from today's covid briefing for journalists.

Dr John Brewin, chief executive of Nottinghamshire Healthcare and one of the responsible officers for vaccination programme across the county, said admissions to hospitals in Nottinghamshire, excluding the Worksop area, were 83 as opposed to 153 the week before.

The number of covid-occupied beds has reduced from 466 to 274 and there has also been a reduction in death rates.

"There is still massive pressure on the hospital system as the rates come down, but for the first time since last October we have less people in our beds since the first peak in April — so still a huge amount going on but there is a sense of the pressure easing across the acute hospitals in the count," he said.

And on the progress of the vaccination programme, which had stalled last week due to a national shortage of supplies, he said: "It's a good news story — 370,000 vaccinations.

"Slight lull this week but we're back on track with supplies to enable us to on average increase our weekly number of vaccines from 40,000 to 80,000.

"We continue to wrap up those initial vulnerable cohorts and open up into the other cohorts. We've opened up into the over 55s this week.

"A significant number of those 80,000 will also be second doses, which adds another level of complexity into the programme itself, but we'll be doing those as proscribed on the eleventh and twelfth weeks, so those numbers will increase significantly over the coming weeks.

"We're optimistic that brief hiccup in supply, which has been a national issue, has been overcome and we're expecting now to be in a steady state over the coming weeks of about 80,000."

Dr Brewin said teams were still contacting the stragglers from the most vulnerable and the earlier cohorts to invite them to be vaccinated or try to overcome their fears about the jab, particularly now more centres were opening that might be nearer to where they live.

"In those cohorts (the ones already invited to be vaccinated) we are above the national average, which from the sticky start we had playing catch-up, is a really pleasing position to be in," he said.

"I'd like to thank everyone for their help with this and I'd like to thank everyone across the health and social care sector for the tremendous efforts they're putting in to making sure that we can continue to provide the very best services we can for our population."

He admitted to concern about the take-up of vaccinations in the NHS and care home sectors, which although high, is not absolute.

He said there were understandable reasons for hesitancy, but staff continued to provide a number of initiatives to help persuade and bust myths.

Jonathan Gribbin, director of Public Health for Nottinghamshire, said: "More than 30,000 asymptomatic tests have been undertaken and I'm really pleased with the progress we're making there, and that's part of our national ambition to make twice-weekly testing part of our routine.

"What I need to ask everyone to remember is whether you're fortunate enough to already have received a vaccine, and even where you've made asymptomatic testing part of your regular routine, it is also essential that we continue to maintain all of the existing measures because no vaccine, no matter how good it is, is absolutely effective and no test is 100% reliable in every situation.

"So, to continue to drive down case rates in Nottinghamshire, and to get them down to a point where it is going to be really safe for us, it is really important that even when we have a vaccine, even if we receive a negative test result, that we continue with all of the measures that we've grown familiar with."

For more from the briefing, see the Advertiser online over the weekend.