Coronavirus: clinical area visits temporarily suspended at Crawley hospitals

Friends and family visits to wards and treatment centres have been temporarily suspended at Crawley Hospital, in West Green Drive, Crawley, and East Surrey Hospital, in Canada Avenue, Redhill, following the latest government advice that everyone must stay home to help stop the spread of coronavirus.

There are some exceptions, allowing for a small number of essential visitors.

These are where there are exceptional circumstances, such as visiting someone at the end of their life, and where parents need to visit babies and children in paediatrics, maternity or the neonatal department.

It remains safe for patients to attend the hospitals for their appointments.

All clinically urgent operations and appointments, including cancer appointments and procedures, will continue to go ahead.

However, the NHS is planning for a possible rise in coronavirus cases nationally, so the number of people coming into hospitals is being reduced.

Clinicians are reviewing all non-urgent appointments and, where it is clinically appropriate to undertake the appointment via telephone or through an online video service, patients will be offered these alternatives.

Non-urgent appointments and procedures that are not suitable for telephone or video consultations will need to be postponed.

Michael Wilson, chief executive of Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “As the chief medical officer has stated, NHS services are likely to come under intense pressure as the coronavirus spreads, and we need to ensure that we have as many beds available as possible to care for patients with severe respiratory problems when the number of infections peaks.

“Therefore, in line with well-established plans for situations like this, every hospital in England has now been asked to suspend all non-urgent elective operations from April 15 for at least three months, with some other procedures likely to be rescheduled before then so we can train our staff and adapt certain areas.

“Urgent and emergency cases and cancer treatments will be carrying on as normal, but we know many people waiting for treatment will be disappointed or worried, and we will be contacting everyone affected as soon as possible.”