A STORNOWAY hospital has closed one of its wards after facing its second Covid outbreak this month.
Western Isles Hospital announced on Sunday that its Medical Ward Two would be closed to new admissions until further notice, after a number of positive Covid cases were linked to the ward.
The ward is now only open to essential visitors, all of whom must take a lateral flow test prior to visiting the hospital.
An Incident Management Team has been established to ensure “all necessary measures” are in place to prevent any further spread of the virus.
The closure comes less than a week after the hospital relaxed its hospital visiting rules allowing different visitors on different days and ending the requirement that visitors be from the same household.
Separate Covid outbreaks also saw Western Isles’ Ward One closed to admissions between May 2-13 , while its surgical ward closed for two weeks from March 31.
Speaking earlier this month, Health Secretary Humza Yousaf warned that Scotland would “almost certainly” face another wave of the virus, saying: “I don’t think that anybody believes BA.2 will be the last sub-lineage of the virus.
“We’re planning in such a way that we will have another wave. What we’re crucially trying to do is protect elective care. Protect those planned surgeries that people have been waiting for one or two years, even longer in some cases.”
Yousaf added: “We’re putting a lot of planning into when the next wave does come and hit us, even in the worst-case scenario – how can we protect some of that elective care in particular.”
Yousaf’s comments followed warnings from national clinical director Jason Leitch, who told the Scottish Government this month that the country was likely to see a resurgence in Covid over the winter.
