BREAKING: The number of people in Bristol's hospitals with coronavirus is still really, really high.
It's a really worrying picture
But there is a glimmer of hope... A THREAD
have a read of this & RT, https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/number-covid-patients-bristols-hospitals-4940330

Numbers are for Southmead, BRI & Weston General.
Numbers fluctuate a lot on a daily basis, as new Covid-19 admissions come in, while patients are thankfully discharged, or tragically die.
So what's the picture?

Looking at the latest figures, it seems the numbers of Covid-19 patients in the 3 hospitals has plateaued.
That may well be because there's no more room - it's at maximum absolute capacity.

Southmead Hospital
1st wave high point - 109 (April 13)
2nd wave high point - 138 (Nov 20)
Post Boris-Christmas 3rd wave high point - 199 (last Friday, Jan 22)
It's only dropped to 196 on Tuesday this week.

BRI & Weston General
1st wave high point - 93 (April 8)
2nd wave high point - 126 (multiple days in Nov)
Post Boris-Christmas 3rd wave high point - 258 (last Monday, Jan 18)

Read that again - 258 people under the care of @uhbwNHS last week being treated for a virus that didn't exist in Bristol a year ago.

Both hospital trusts are reporting an ever so slight decrease (by barely a handful) this week, compared to last week.
The key point is, it has stopped rising. (again, whether this is because they can take no more, or it has stopped rising, we don't know).

The latest Govt figures for the 2 trusts say numbers in hospital on Tuesday this week (Jan 26) are
UHBW 226
Southmead 196
(total 419)
However, @BristolCouncil's latest figure says that by yesterday, that had gone back up to 427.
So it's not falling steadily yet by any means

These aren't numbers. All of these numbers are real people, actual Bristolians with families unable to visit them, anxiously waiting for daily updates from real doctors and nurses and amazing NHS staff working their absolute hearts out to save people's lives hour by hour.

The most serious Covid-19 patients end up on ventilators. Their lungs & maybe other vital organs haven't responded to the drugs & care, & they need to be kept alive mechanically. Some will survive, some won't. It's heartbreaking
On Christmas Day at Southmead, there were just...

Covid patients on ventilators on Christmas Day
Southmead 4
UHBW 11
Covid patients on ventilators on Jan 22
Southmead 32
UHBW 35
Covid patients on ventilators on Jan 26:
Southmead 26
UHBW 31

If there is hope, for the staff, for all of us, it is in the number of new Covid patients coming in to our hospitals each day.
In early to mid-December, at UHBW, it fluctuated between 7 or 8 a day to 15 or 16 a day.
There was a steady increase after Christmas...

By the 2nd week of January, it was up between 25 and 30 new admissions every day. People who had caught Covid maybe 10-14 days earlier & hadn't shaken it off. They'd taken a turn for the worse.
On Jan 17, 31 people were admitted like this.
That's one person every 46mins for 24hrs

Since then at BRI & Weston Gen it goes up & down. For instance on Saturday just gone, 24 new patients came in, on Sunday it was 14.
A significant minority of these new patients, despite all the amazing efforts of staff, will die.

The glimmer of hope is that it's stopped getting progressively worse. It's reached a plateau of absolute maximum worse-ness.
These people will be in hospital for weeks, maybe, months. More will join them as hundreds are still catching this virus every day in Bristol.

It took from April to June to see any significant drop off in new admissions and numbers in hospital. At the BRI, for example, from that highpoint of 91 in April, there were still 63 people in hospital in June.

It will only get better, the numbers in hospital will only begin to fall, the numbers dying will only decrease, and this awful lockdown will only be eased, if we all continue to do our best to stop spreading the virus.
Stay inside. Don't mix with people. Wash hands. Wear a mask