More than 350 people discharged from Staffordshire hospitals after recovering from Covid-19

As of May 6, 377 patients had been discharged from Royal Stoke University Hospital and Stafford’s County Hospital after recovering from the virus.

As of May 12 there had been 250 coronavirus-related deaths at the two hospitals run by University Hospitals of North Midlands (UHNM) NHS Trust.

The news came after hospital bosses heard there had been a fall in the number of patients with Covid-19 during their board meeting this morning, which was streamed live so members of the public could view proceedings.

Paul Bytheway, UHNM’s chief operating officer, said: “We are starting to see a reduction in Covid-19 positive patients in beds. We are now placed to start looking at reducing our footprint in critical care – it is now back within its original footprint of 30-35 beds.

“Paediatric intensive care was escalated and has now been empty for about a week. We are working with the paediatric team at Birmingham Children’s Hospital to look at how we bring back our paediatric intensive care unit back into Staffordshire Children’s Hospital.

“We had 300 beds identified for Covid-19 patients – we are now in the process of turning them from Covid-19 beds into ‘green beds’ – Covid 19-free beds – so we can start gearing up for recovery and restoration.”

Meetings to consider the “recovery” process were due to start, Mr Bytheway told the meeting, and would be looking towards getting some services “back up and running”.

“We are focusing on recovery, restoration and transformation of services – not going back but moving forward and doing things differently”, he added.

Board chairman David Wakefield welcomed the news. “That is very helpful and great to hear,” he said.

But board member Ian Smith asked if the recovery and restoration plans took into consideration a possible second or even third wave of Covid-19 cases hitting the area.

Mr Bytheway responded: “We will ensure we have two or three wards empty so if we have a surge we will have capacity to manage that.”