The latest official Covid-19 data from our hospitals backs up hopes that the latest wave of the virus has subsided.
In the past fortnight each of the five hospital trusts in the North East have seen the number of Covid-19 positive patients on their wards fall sharply. Most obviously, at the Royal Victoria Infirmary and Freeman in Newcastle there are a third of the Covid-19 cases seen on July 24.
Throughout July, hospital execs warned that the prevalence of the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of Omicron were causing huge pressure on NHS services. In Newcastle they explicitly connected the latest rise in Covid to difficulties tackling ongoing elective backlogs.
