Facemasks are reintroduced at the Royal Preston and Chorley Hospital, as ‘dozens of staff a day’ are forced to self-isolate

The requirement has been reintroduced - with immediate effect - for patients, visitors and staff in all patient-facing, clinical areas of the two facilities.

The move comes less than a month after Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (LTH) relaxed the rules on mask-wearing in line with revised national guidance which was issued at the time.

There are no other changes to visiting arrangements at the Preston and Chorley sites as part of the returm to masking.

The Lancashire Post understands that there have been days in the past week when up to 35 LTH staff have tested positive for the virus and so have been unable to work - with the cumulative number of employees self-isolating at any one time consequently being even higher.

The guidance remains that healthcare staff who test positive for Covid should not attend work for at least five days - with patient-facing workers allowed to return only when they have had two consecutive, negative lateral flow test results at least 24 hours apart.

Meanwhile, the latest figures show that there were 102 inpatients at Preston and Chorley hospitals who had Covid as of Tuesday (5th July), the frist time the tally has hit three figures since late April - although as the Post reported late last month, it is estimated that only around a third of those admitted during the current wave have ended up on the wards as a direct result of being infected.

Speaking to the Post last week, Professor Mohammed Munavvar, a senior respiratory physician and Covid specialist at the Royal Preston, said that he would have preferred masks still to be required in hospital facilities.

“Some of my patients asked me the other day, when I was doing a clinic, why I was still wearing a mask. And I had to explain to them that I see so many patients that I don’t want to pick something up and pass it onto [any of the others].

“We can’t afford to pass it onto our colleagues either, because we cannot have another outbreak of staff sickness,” said Professor Munavvar, adding that staff had continued to be “very cautious” when it came to masking.

Even after the rules were relaxed last month, LTH still required masks to be worn on certain wards - and also by anyone entering an area where immunocompromised patients were being treated.

Nationally, healthcare workers are also still required to take lateral flow tests twice a week, even if they are displaying no symptoms of Covid..

The latest Office for National Statistics survey estimated that 2.7 million people were infected with the virus across the UK in the week to 29th June – that equates to 1 in 25 of the population and was an 18 percent jump in seven days.

The number of Covid patients in intensive care stood at 217 in England, up from 111 at the start of June – but below the Alpha wave peak of over 3,700 in January 2021.