No New Year's Day hospital visits due to Covid cases

[dutchman]

Plans to allow limited visiting to two hospitals in Coventry and Warwickshire on New Year's Day have been scrapped due to rising Covid-19 cases



The proposal would have allowed one visitor per patient for an hour.

The decision is to give the "best protection" to staff and patients, the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust (UHCW) said.

Visiting on compassionate grounds, such as for those receiving end-of-life care, will not be affected.

UHCW runs University Hospital, Coventry, and The Hospital of St Cross, Rugby, and visiting has been suspended in most cases due to the pandemic.

But in the run-up to the festive period, health bosses had proposed to allow some visiting on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day to support patients.

The cancellation of the arrangement for 1 January comes as Covid-19 cases continue to rapidly rise in Coventry and Rugby, with the spread of the Omicron variant.

For Coventry, the rate of new cases for the week up to 25 December was 1030.3 per 100,000 people, compared to 720.9 per 100,000 for the previous seven days.

Over the same period, Rugby's rate rose from 779.0 per 100,000 people to 1118.8