Covid patients in hospital on Fylde coast shoot up from six to 34 as top doc says he is 'very worried'

Some 29 are on the wards at Blackpool Victoria Hospital, two are in intensive care, and three are in Clifton Hospital in St Annes.

The hospitals' medical director, Dr Jim Gardner, said the "dramatic" rise is "very worrying" but said not every patient is in hospital because of Covid.

"I just want to clarify the point about the numbers and how they are calculated," he said.

"When we talk about 34 patients being positive in the hospital, these are patients who are within 14 days of their first positive swab.

"It is possible that a patient could come into hospital with an entirely unrelated condition; for example, a broken leg.

"We would swab all patients coming into hospital, so if that patient is positive for Covid they show in our data."

He added: "It's not a trivial thing because we need to manage those patients essentially in isolation and they are considered infectious until 14 days after their first swab.

"So the way the hospital functions safely depends on us knowing that data, but not all of those 34 will be suffering from the extreme Covid symptoms that we became so used to in April or May."

Dr Gardner said data showed the resort's infection rate had grown from 64.5 per 100,000 people last week to 70, with Wyre's rate shooting up from 47.3 to 69, and Fylde's from 61.9 to 100.

"That progressive increase is increasingly worrying and the messages around us all being incredible careful [and] following the Governments are, as ever, so important," he said during his weekly coronavirus briefing yesterday.

However, figures since released by the Lancashire Resilience Forum, set up to spearhead local efforts to combat the virus's spread, put the infection rates at 66 for Blackpool, 53.9 for Wyre, and 92.8 for Fylde.

Hospital visiting continues to be restricted, Dr Gardner said, with guests only allowed in the maternity and children's departments, as well as to see dying loved ones.

All staff and patients are being asked to wear masks "all the time", even when lying in bed, he added.

"This is an uncomfortable reality," he said.

"I don't think any of us enjoy wearing masks all of the time but that is something that Public Health England and NHS England are asking us to do, and so we have implemented that as part of our risk management policy."

The number of Vic patients dead after testing positive for Covid-19 now stands at 249, with the latest dying on Monday.

A total of 1,396 people in the council area of Blackpool have now been confirmed to have had the virus.