Scientists have warned worrying new figures show that a quarter of patients currently being treated for COVID in hospitals across England actually caught the virus after they were admitted. There are growing fears this is due to failures within hospital trusts, meaning further restrictions across the UK may not improve the crisis. The North West, which is facing the threat of new restrictions next week, saw 24 percent of patients in hospital test positive for COVID seven days or more after they were admitted.
Professor Carl Heneghan at the University of Oxford said the new hospital cases could partly be caused by people who have been admitted for other conditions.
He told the Telegraph: “I think this shows it’s too early and too hasty to reach for more restrictive measures.
“We’ve got a lot of measures in place already. Once you start to get into the data, it’s not as simple as cases rising or hospitals admissions rising.
“This shows there is a significant problem with healthcare-acquired infections.”
The moves came as a further 13,864 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK were reported on Friday, and 87 more deaths were confirmed of people who died within 28 days of testing positive for coronavirus.
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7.51am update: Mayor of Liverpool has said he expects the city to be put in a tier three lockdown within days
Joe Anderson told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday: “We had some conversations with Downing Street yesterday, we have got further conversations, discussions with them this afternoon.
“And I expect that Liverpool will be one of those announced. We will be in the local lockdown, new local lockdown, which is announced, which will probably be, well, will be tier three, and that that will be enacted in Parliament on Tuesday.
“We are continuing the discussions and conversations today.”
