YORK'S hospital trust has reopened a second Covid ward as the number of patients requiring hospital treatment continues to increase slowly.

The ward has been opened by York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust at Scarborough Hospital, in addition to one already operating at York Hospital.

Until now, all Covid patients in the Scarborough area who required hospital treatment were being taken to York Hospital.

The trust revealed yesterday that it was now treating a total of 24 inpatients with suspected or confirmed Covid-19, which compares with 20 or fewer last week.

It said two of the patients were in intensive care, compared with one last week.

Covid patient numbers, which briefly fell to zero in May, have been rising slowly since then in the wake of huge increases in the number of Covid cases across the York area.

However, they are still only a tenth of the number of Covid patients at the peak of the winter wave of the disease, which peaked at 242 inpatients across the two hospitals on January 26.

This is because vaccination is now protecting most older, more vulnerable people from catching the virus, or from being sufficiently ill to require hospitalisation if they do catch it.