Four people die of Covid at Milton Keynes hospital over the past few days

Until this mini surge, The hospital had not seen any Covid-related deaths for more than five months, since the end of May.

Government figures show 108 patients have now died of the virus at MK hospital since the start of the pandemic. This figure does not include deaths in care home or in the community.

On Thursday last week, the hospital's medical director Ian Reckless reported there were 20 Covid patients in the hospital and two of them were in intensive care..

He said at a board meeting: “So we’ve got some patients at the sick end again and we have seven or eight patients on ward two who are positive.

“The numbers of positives in the organisation is going up and the proportion of patients going through ward two who turn out to have a positive swab is going up."

And he added: “It feels though we are definitely on the up slope of this second wave.”

The meeting heard that the situation is made more complex because someone can have the symptoms of Covid-19 and test negative one day but be positive the next.

But Dr Reckless said the hospital has a “number of reasons to be cautiously optimistic about the Milton Keynes picture and “all sorts of plans” for what to do if cases continue to rise.

Emma Livesley, the chief operations officer, told the meeting that the hospital can use the 24 beds of ward 24 if the Covid numbers rise. And they are planning to keep elective and outpatient appointments going.

She was asked whether the hospital could cope if covid numbers doubled over the next week to 10 days. She said: “Yes, I do.”

There are also plans to send patients to either Papworth or Addenbrookes hospital if numbers in MK do escalate.

Between Sunday afternoon and Monday (yesterday) afternoon, 65 new cases of coronavirus were confirmed in Milton Keynes. Today's figures will be released shortly.