THE number of patients receiving treatment for coronavirus at Dorset County Hospital has sharply fallen within a week as people recover and are sent home.

Professor Alastair Hutchison, chief medical officer at the hospital, confirmed that as of Wednesday, March 3, Dorset County Hospital staff were treating eight patients with Covid-19, including one person in intensive care.

The week before, Wednesday, February 24, there were 25 patients with Covid-19 at the Dorchester hospital.

He commented last week that the numbers of coronavirus patients had ‘plateaued’ and suggested this may be down to patients taking a long time to recover from the virus and be subsequently discharged.

Speaking about the decreasing numbers of coronavirus patients, Prof Hutchison said: “It is a fantastic improvement, and it means that we had about five days with nobody in Intensive Treatment Unit with Covid but ITU is still busy with non-Covid patients.

“I think that must be the explanation – quite a number of Covid patients had been discharged from ITU and the hospital.

“Even as late on as Monday, we still had 15 patients but now that number halved. That’s not because patients have died, it’s because they have been discharged.”

He also observed deaths were slowing down and remarked ‘the overall picture is very good indeed’.

Across Dorset as of Wednesday, March 3, there were 65 patients with coronavirus in hospital. Prof Hutchison that there are 50 people with coronavirus being treated between Poole Hospital and Royal Bournemouth Hospital. There also a small number of other hospitals, such as in Bridport and Winterbourne, who are looking after coronavirus patients.

Prof Hutchison added: “We are still seeing very low admissions for people with Covid.”

Previously, Prof Hutchison stated that the fall in coronavirus patients is due to the mass vaccination programme and lockdown restrictions limiting transmission of the virus.

He said in late-February: “I think two things have happened – first the lockdown has been working and second the vaccination programme is now working.

“We think at least in the over 80s age group, we have reached that point where a vast majority are vaccinated.

“The fact we have vaccinated the majority of them, you would expect after a lag period of a couple of weeks, the number of patients with serious illness to go down dramatically and you can see that in the admission figures.”