A Lincolnshire hospital trust has turned to the military for help in the face of rising coronavirus numbers.
A request for military support was sent by the United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust (ULHT) on December 2.
“Subsequently 18 military healthcare personnel commenced at Lincoln County Hospital on December 7 for an induction, started work on December 8 and have been a great asset to the hospital team,” says a report to members of the Lincolnshire Care Commissioning Group (CCG).
Members of the board were due to meet yesterday (Wednesday).
“All staff across all services in the county are clearly working hard to manage the current wave of COVID and its impact across community and acute provision but alongside delivery of non-COVID and its impact across community and acute provision but alongside delivery of non-COVID services, growing winter pressures, vaccine rollout and recovery of waiting lists,” board members were told.
The report, written on the morning of December 16, also shows that there were 226 patients with COVID in Lincoln and the Pilgrim hospitals.
“The trust, at the time of writing, has the highest number of COVID admissions in the region.”
The ULHT had staffing and bed capacity reasons linked to the pandemic.
“Workforce from both a clinical administrative areas have been impacted and pulled to the wards to support the resurgence, this is the same position for neighbouring trusts,” the report says.
As of December 14, there was a 371,500 capacity for testing in commercial laboratories and a further 1,100 in local labs.
There has also been a ‘large scale’ recruitment campaign with 78 applicants being offered roles within the vaccination programme.
“The local NHS under strong leadership, has pulled together to commence the greatest vaccination programme ever undertaken by the NHS and the board should note the significant effort of everyone involved and positive patient feedback,” the report adds.
Board members were also told that as of December 16 there had been 20,706 cases of COVID-19 in the county. There were 419 deaths, 1,022 discharges and 226 in-patients.
The second wave has added ‘significant pressure’ on workforce levels.
Patient ‘flow through’ has been adversely effected from arrival to discharge.
There have been ambulance handover delays as a result but Grantham hospital remains a ‘green’ COVID free site to enable elective surgery to continue.
It comes after South Holland and Lincolnshire remained in Tier 3 of restrictions with the next look at tiers due on December 30.
Government advice on allowing up to three households to meet at Christmas was also scaled down to just Christmas Day.
South Holland MP, Sir John Hayes, who had asked for Lincolnshire to be reduced to Tier 2, said: “The good new is they’re going to look at it at a district level every two weeks.
“It’s a disappointment, but you can’t disagree with the logic of it and you’ve got to recognise the facts for your argument.”
