Number of Covid patients in beds at Shropshire hospitals reaches peak and is starting to fall, new figures show

The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, which runs Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Telford's Princess Royal Hospital, was caring for 165 coronavirus patients as of Friday last week, according to the latest statistics from NHS England.

It is the most amount of Covid-19 patients that the hospitals have cared for so far.

The data shows that the number of people being treated at the county's main hospitals for Covid-19 by 8am on January 29 was up from 142 on the same day the previous week.

However, since then the number dropped to 147 on Tuesday.

Last week, the trust declared an internal ‘incident’ meaning it put additional measures in place to ensure that it could deal with the additional numbers of patients that its hospitals were seeing.

Dr Arne Rose, medical director at SaTH, says on top of caring for coronavirus patients, staff are continuing to see high numbers of acutely unwell patients and the hospitals remain "incredibly busy".

He said: "There is no doubt that things are tough at the moment.

"The number of patients in our hospitals who have coronavirus remains very high.

"And, sadly, we are still seeing people dying."

As of Tuesday, Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust was also caring for 21 coronavirus patients – up from nine on the same day the previous week.

The trust runs Bishop's Castle Community Hospital, Bridgnorth Community Hospital, Ludlow Community Hospital and Whitchurch Community Hospital.

The most recent figures show The Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital, near Oswestry, was caring for five Covid-19 patients on Tuesday, one more than on the same day the previous week.

The death toll of coronavirus patients at Shropshire's hospitals has now reached more than 470 since the start of the pandemic.