New NHS tool helps you find out Covid cases at YOUR local hospital

THIS new tool can help you find out how many patients are being admitted to hospital with the coronavirus in your local area.

Data from the government’s coronavirus dashboard now shows information for hospital trusts across the the country.

The new feature to the dashboard allows you to see how many patients are in hospital with the virus, how many are on ventilation and how many are being admitted daily.

Healthcare statistics previously published by Public Health England (PHE) on the dashboard featured regional data.

From today data will include information for individual NHS Trusts as well as the weekly number of people receiving a PCR test and positivity, for England and by local authority.

Experts have hailed the new development and Professor Tim Spector, who heads of the ZOE Symptom Tracker app with King’s College London said it would give the public more transparency.

In a tweet he said: “Finally an NHS dashboard for checking Covid admissions in your local hospitals- should be very useful to improve transparency and give the public key information.”

Experts say that if coronavirus cases rise then hospital admissions come after that.

For example Medway in Kent has the highest rate in England, with 2,151 new cases recorded in the seven days to December 13 – the equivalent of 772.2 cases per 100,000 people.

This is up from 604.9 in the seven days to December 6.

According to dashboard data Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partner Trust currently has no patients on ventilation but has nine patients currently in hospital.

Graphs relating to the trust in Kent show how hospital admissions have changed over time.

The graph above shows how in September and October – hospital admissions were non-existent for the trust, but a cases increased in November – so did hospital admissions.

To use the tool you need to head to the government’s coronavirus dashboard.

LOCAL DATA

Then head to the healthcare tab which appears on the left of the screen.

By clicking on “Healthcare in the United Kingdom” you will be given the option to select NHS regions or NHS Trusts.

Selecting NHS Trusts will then allow you to select from a scroll down menu of all the NHS Trusts in England.

Here you will be able to see the relevant data for your hospital, whereas before you would only be able to see data for your local area as a whole.

Another example is the East London Foundational Trust.

East London includes boroughs such as Newham which has seen an increase in cases – along with the whole of the capital.

The data shows that there are currently 52 patients in hospital with the virus across the trust.

The update on hospital admissions comes after it was earlier this week revealed that a new strain of the virus may be causing an increase in cases in the South of the country.

The Health Secretary told MPs more than 1,000 cases of the new “variant” has been discovered in up to 60 places across the UK – and the World Health Organisation has been informed.

Matt Hancock told the Commons: “Initial analysis suggests that this variant is growing faster than the existing variants.”

There are over 60 areas affected, which is “growing rapidly” and similar strains have been identified in other countries, he said.

He added: “We’ve seen very sharp exponential rises of the virus across London, Kent parts of Essex and Hertfordshire.”

Because of this these areas were moved into Tier 3 this week in a bid to stop the growing amount of cases and in turn, hospital admissions.