Reader's letter: We're getting over the worst of Covid

A recent headline in the printed media read ‘Big rise in East Sussex Covid hospitalisations’, with the accompanying article stating that it had risen by 68 per cent over the previous seven days.

That was probably enough to scare the living daylights out of some folk, especially those who thought that the country was finally getting over the worst of the pandemic.

However, if they had delved deeper into the article, they would have found that the ‘big rise’ actually amounted to just 13 extra patients, over the previous week, being admitted to one of the Trust’s five hospitals – Bexhill, the Conquest in Hastings, Eastbourne District and General, Rye, Winchelsea and District Memorial and Uckfield Community.

And how many people rely on these five hospitals for their health care? Well, the Trust, which is one of the largest in the entire country, actually looks after 525,000 residents of the county.

Why anyone thought it worth making a big fuss out of the fact that less than three dozen people, out of more than half a million, had been found to have the virus when they were tested on arrival at one of these hospitals over the period of one week beats me, especially as a majority of them didn’t arrive because of the virus but by reason of any other illness or accident that normally leads people to become hospital patients.