40,600 people likely caught Covid while hospital inpatients in England

More than 40,600 people have been likely infected with coronavirus while being treated in hospital in England for another reason, raising concerns about the NHS’s inability to protect them.

In one in five hospitals at least a fifth of all patients found to have the virus caught it while an inpatient. North Devon district hospital in Barnstaple had the highest rate of such cases among acute trusts in England at 31%.

NHS England figures also reveal stark regional differences in patients’ risk of catching the virus that causes COVID-19 during their stay. Just under a fifth (19%) of those in hospital in the north-west became infected while an inpatient, almost double the 11% rate in London hospitals.

Hull University teaching hospitals trust and Lancashire teaching hospitals trust had the joint second highest rate of patients – 28% – who became infected while under their care. The former has had 626 such cases while the latter has had 486. However, the big differences in hospitals’ size and the number of patients they admit mean that the rate of hospital-acquired infection is a more accurate reflection of the success of their efforts to stop transmission of the potentially lethal virus.

Doctors and hospitals claim that many of the infections were caused by the NHS’s lack of beds and limitations posed by some hospitals being old, cramped and poorly ventilated, as well as health service bosses’ decision that hospitals should keep providing normal care while the second wave of Covid was unfolding, despite the potential danger to those receiving non-Covid care.

“These heartbreaking figures show how patients and NHS staff have been abysmally let down by the failure to suppress the virus ahead of and during the second wave,” said Layla Moran MP, the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus.

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Source: The Guardian, 26 March 2021