A SECOND Covid ward has opened at York Hospital after the number of patients being treated rose over the weekend to the highest level of the current wave.

York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said today that it now had 39 confirmed and suspected Covid-19 inpatients across the trust.

That compares with ir briefly having no Covid patients in May but also with a peak of 242 Covid patients at the height of the second wave on January 26.

The numbers are much lower because the vaccination programme is protecting most people in the older, more vulnerable part of the population, who formed the largest proportion of Covid patients needing hospitalisation last winter.

The trust said it now had two Covid wards at York Hospital and one at Scarborough, while five patients were being treated in intensive care - again the highest number of the current wave.

It said a total of 2,310 Covid-19 patients had now been discharged since the start of the pandemic, or were or no longer being treated as having Covid, indicating that the arrival of new patients has been balanced partly by others being sent home after treatment.