Chesterfield Royal Hospital dealing with more coronavirus patients than during April peak

Of those, 14 are being treated in critical care.

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This time last week, there were 77 Covid-19 patients at the Royal – 11 of whom were in intensive care.

Krishna Kallianpur, executive chief nurse at Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We are now looking after more inpatients with a positive diagnosis of Covid-19 than we were during the April 2020 peak.

“The demand on our services also continues to rise which brings with it additional challenges.

“This means that we have, as expected, further escalated our plans to ensure we have the capacity at our hospital to give all of our patients the immediate care they need during an ever-changing situation.

“The situation we find ourselves in is very challenging and, in order to free up capacity and ensure we have more intensive care space, the difficult decision has been made to postpone elective surgery for the remainder of the week.

“All affected patients are being contacted immediately, will be informed about the next steps of their treatment and our clinical teams are constantly reviewing the situation to ensure can we can reinstate surgeries as soon as we possibly can.”

The trust has recorded a total of 229 deaths related to coronavirus.

A spokesperson for Chesterfield Royal Hospital said: “We send our condolences to everyone who has lost a loved one during the pandemic.”

Since March, nearly 950 coronavirus patients have been discharged home after being treated at the Royal.

Under a third national lockdown announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday night, people can only leave home to shop for basic necessities, to go to work if jobs cannot be done from home, to exercise with household members or one other person preferably just once a day, to meet those in support or childcare bubbles, to seek help and to escape domestic abuse.

The Royal spokesperson said: “The new variant of the virus spreads more quickly and has been impacting hospitals across the country.

“It is absolutely crucial that we all follow the Government guidelines.”

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