VISITING restrictions at York Hospital have been eased slightly in response to recent falls in the number of Covid cases in the community.

The number of Covid wards has also been reduced from three at the height of the Omicron wave last month to one such ward today, following a sharp fall in the number of patients with the illness.

York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust brought in tough restrictions around the New Year for people wanting to visit inpatients at its hospitals, in response to the surge in Covid cases caused by the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

Patients could only have the same single visitor each day, staying for a maximum of an hour a day.

Now the trust is allowing different family members or friends to visit patients, although this must be on a separate day and still only one visitor per day, for a maximum of an hour, and visiting slots must still be booked with the relevant ward.

It says exceptions will be made for end-of-life situations, patients who are vulnerable such as a learning disability or dementia/cognitive impairment or other extreme circumstances where the Nurse in Charge deems this as suitable such as discharge planning arrangements or sensitive conversations where support is required.

It says visitors are being asked to minimise the time they spend in the hospital so are asked to arrive as close to their visiting time as possible and to go directly to the ward.

Before visiting, all visitors are also being asked to help to keep patients safe by undertaking a lateral flow test, which must give a negative result prior to attending.

A spokeswoman said the change had been made following recent reductions in the number of people testing positive for Covid and the restrictions would remain under review.

The trust had more than 160 confirmed and suspected Covid patients at the height of the Omicron wave last month, which compared with a peak of 242 such patients at the height of the Alpha wave in January last year.

It said yesterday that it now had 125 such patients, with only one in intensive care, and a total of 3,627 Covid patients had been discharged since the start of the pandemic almost two years ago.

Some of the 125 patients only have Covid incidentally, having tested positive after coming into hospital because of some other illness or injury.

The trust had three Covid wards at York Hospital and two at Scarborough Hospital on January 10, but a spokeswoman said yesterday that it now had one such ward at York and one more at Scarborough, although there could also be Covid bays on some other wards.