MORE and more people are needing care for Covid-19 in hospitals.

Across the south-east region, which includes Hampshire, there are 460 patients in hospital today. The latest available figure for the Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester is 33 on Thursday.

Three more deaths have been reported: two in Southampton and one in the area covered by the Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundations Trust which is central and north Hampshire.

Some 54 people have tested positive for the virus in the Winchester district in the last 48 hours. Friday's figure was 863. Today the figure released by the Government on its website was 917 since the start of the pandemic in March.

Data shows that the infection rate in the city council district is 734.4 people in every 100,000 since the start of the crisis in March. See graph below:

Andover Advertiser:

In the Winchester district the number of new cases in the last seven days has been 149, with 93 in the seven days previously.

‘Winchester district’ comprises more than just the city and is the city council area which stretches from Micheldever in the north to Southwick in the south, from Sparsholt in the west to Bramdean in the east.

In the Hampshire County Council area, that includes Winchester, the tally has risen from 8,641 to 9,130 in the last 48 hours, a rise of 489.

The R number, the reproduction number, in the south-east has dropped slightly to between 1.2 and 1.5 meaning that on average every 10 people infected will infect between 12 and 15 other people. The growth rate in the south east region is now between +4% and +7%, meaning the number of new infections is growing by up to 7% every day.

The rate for new cases in the district for the last seven days to Tuesday October 20, the latest available, is 67.3 people per 100,000 (84 cases). On the week to October 13 the figure was 74.5 (93), so a slight decline week on week.

Nationally, 151 people have died in the UK, bringing the number of confirmed reported deaths to 44,896. There have been 873,800 cases of the virus across the UK. This is an increase of 19,790 in the last 24 hours.

Andover Advertiser:

The number of deaths in Hampshire hospitals is now 626. The figure for fatalities at the Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which includes the RHCH in Winchester, is 166. For the other local county trusts: Portsmouth Hospital, 239; Solent, 2; Southern Health, 17; University Hospital Southampton, 204.

Regarding Covid patients admitted to hospital, the latest figure is 70 reported on Friday, up five on Wednesday, in the south-east region, which includes Hampshire. There are today 460 with the condition in hospital, up 68 on Friday, with 20 on ventilators, up three, according to the ONS. The numbers are not broken down for the hospitals in Hampshire.

Total number of deaths since the start of the pandemic of people who had had a positive test result for Covid-19 and died within 28 days of the first positive test, remains: Hampshire, 738, same (53.4 per 100,000 people), Portsmouth, 79 (36.8) and Southampton, 126 (49.9). The Winchester district figure, the city council area, is 81, a rate of 64.9, higher than the other three areas mentioned. But all the Hampshire figures are below the national average.