In common with the rest of the country local residents have been out on Thursday evenings at 8pm applauding NHS staff risking their lives to treat people believed to have the coronavirus.
The East Sussex NHS Healthcare Trust (ESHT) which runs Hastings Conquest Hospital, and other hospitals in Eastbourne, Bexhill, Crowborough, Lewes, Uckfield and Rye, has doubled its critical care capacity at the Conquest to cope with the expected increase in patients with suspected or confirmed Covid-19 – and the aim is to have five times the normal critical capacity shortly using operating theatres and recovery areas.
Other changes including moving chemotherapy services to East Sussex College in Eastbourne, next to the Eastbourne hospital, in order to minimise risks to cancer patients, and relocating maternity services to the Conquest.
Other changes may follow and non-urgent operations and procedures will be postponed.
Across the whole of East Sussex (whose land area is probably bigger than Greater London, and which stretches north from the coast to the Kent border south of Tunbridge Wells, and from Rye in the east to past Brighton and Hove in the west), so far, 229 people have tested positive for the virus, Public Health England said before Easter, and NHS England said there have been 21 deaths linked to Covid-19 in the hospitals run by the ESHT.
Video courtesy of Caren Draper.