Royal Stoke hit by vomiting and diarrhoea bug as three wards affected

Residents in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire have been warned not to go to A&E which has been hit with a highly-contagious vomiting and diarrhoea bug. Bosses at the Royal Stoke University Hospital declared a critical incident this week, in part due to the gastroenteritis outbreak.

Dr Steve Fawcett, the clinical director of urgent care in Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, said that some areas of the hospital were under "severe pressure" after the alarm was raised at both the Royal Stoke and Stafford's County Hospital on Tuesday.

On top of the bug outbreak, the University Hospital of the North Midlands - the trust running both the Hartshill and Stafford sites - says the whole integrated care system is currently under pressure with a 'high level of demand'. It says 10 beds are currently out of action.

READ MORE: Desperate couple stuck in 'mouldy' Stoke house plead for council help

READ MORE: Recap: Crash shuts A500

Dr Fawcett urged those who had planned to visit A&E to go to pharmacies instead, stating “While the NHS is absolutely there to treat the ill and people who need hospital treatment, what we really need is to try and give the hospitals some space to deal with those sick patients.”

The incident means longer delays than usual are to be expected while the sickest patients are prioritised. Latest wait times at the Royal Stoke show there are delays of three hours and 40 minutes with 144 people in the queue.

Dr Fawcett told the Mirror: “We’ve got infection in the hospital with things like gastroenteritis, which is closing down some of our bed capacity... and causing problems with flow of patients through the system - back into their own homes.”

A "significant number of beds” are believed to be “out of action" across three wards, with the infection control team waiting for the all-clear. Dr Fawcett added that the hospital faces additional pressures every winter, but had seen a recent surge which had taken a number of wards out of use.

He said: “It won’t be all the beds, necessarily, on those wards that are affected, but there are a significant number of beds that have been taken out of action because we have to wait for a specific time period for the infection control team to give it the all-clear, for them to be re-used.

“The whole system is busy, everyone’s working really hard, and it just aggravates it when you’ve got other issues that contribute to the pressure.”

The trust declared a critical incident on Tuesday and parts of the hospital system are understood to be facing very long wait times and ambulance delays. Critical incidents typically last a few days with the situation being reviewed on an hourly basis.

In a briefing to NHS workers, Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Integrated Care Board said: "All services across primary, secondary and community care are continuing to see a high level of demand, especially relating to hospital admissions, putting additional pressure on services and significant strain on our workforce. Ambulance services are also under pressure, and this may have an impact on waiting times.

"Due to the current demand for urgent and emergency care, for both physical and mental health services, system executives across the Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent ICS have made the decision to declare an NHS System Critical Incident. This helps all providers to take additional measures to maintain safe services for our patients and those in the community waiting for an ambulance.

"Partners across the system are working together to mitigate the challenges and explore all avenues that would support admission avoidance and timely discharge. During this time the emergency departments will continue to see the sickest patients first, which means, for some patients, there may be much longer delays than usual. We are therefore asking the public to help us by only using A&E in a serious or life-threatening emergency. When we’re discharging patients, we ask that their friends or loved ones pick them up from hospital as soon as possible and have everything they need at home."

Get daily headlines and breaking news emailed to you - it’s FREE