It’s critical – Brighton hospital ‘full’ after surge in coronavirus cases

All 66 critical care beds were occupied at a Brighton hospital trust after a surge in coronavirus patients.

The figures emerged in a national survey which found that one in five NHS hospital trusts had no spare critical beds for adults.

The survey, on Sunday (10 January), found that 27 trusts had reported 100 per cent occupancy of “open” beds.

Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals (BSUH), which runs the Royal Sussex County Hospital said that it was cancelling some routine operations as it tried to cope with the strain.

The trust said: “We are caring for a rapidly increasing number of patients with covid-19, which is placing unprecedented pressure on our services.

“To ensure we can care for the high numbers of patients we are seeing, we have taken the difficult decision to postpone some routine planned procedures.

“This allows us to move staff between departments and support critical care and covid-19 wards.

“We will contact all patients whose appointments need to be rescheduled.”

The number of new cases of covid-19 is still running at just over 2,000 a week in Brighton and Hove.

The latest figures indicate that there were 2,104 new cases in the seven days to Saturday 9 January, a rate of 723.3 per 100,000 people.

In the previous seven-day period, there were 2,019 new cases, a rate of 694.1 per 100,000.

So far, 281 BSUH patients who tested positive for the coronavirus within the previous 28 days have died in hospital since the start of the pandemic.

In the week to Tuesday (12 January), the trust recorded 19 deaths, down from 21 in the week to Tuesday 5 January.