HOSPITAL bosses have said they hope to resume operations for some cancer patients next week after it was revealed only two people had been seen because of the surge in Covid cases.

Paul Brennan, chief operating officer at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said only two "major" cancer patients had been seen in hospital in the last week because of the number of people being admitted to hospital with Covid.

The trust took the decision to postpone all non-urgent operations last weekend to focus on those needing urgent and emergency care.

“We have had to close down to virtually all elective admissions across the two hospitals because of the level of Covid-positive inpatients," Mr Brennan told the acute trust's board during a meeting on Thursday (January 14).

"Over the last seven days we have actually only done two major cancer cases that we have been able to bring in. One yesterday (January 13) and one on Monday (January 11).

“That is quite a significant concern.

"We are working with the independent sector to seek to get back up to the level of activity for - particularly colorectal and urological cancer – that we were doing in the first wave.”

The trust said it would "realistically" be able to start again from Monday (January 18) and was also hoping to find space at Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcester for the treatments.

Mr Brennan said numbers were “rising rapidly” with 250 people in hospital in Worcestershire with Covid on top of the people in intensive care.

He said current levels were “way beyond the peak in wave one which was on October 6 when it was 141 patients."

The trust's chief operating officer added that 60 staff had been redeployed to support critical care units across the trust.

“Our focus at the moment is on managing the Covid and non-Covid patients in the hospital and then trying to find ways to enable us to undertake some complex cancer surgery on the Worcester site," he said.

Hospital trust chief executive Matthew Hopkins said, on top of treating patients with Covid, hospitals still had a duty to provide urgent and emergency care for other illnesses – particularly cancer patients.

He said: “We have been refreshing our main objectives and as a consequence we have had to make some difficult decisions in relation to prioritisation of treatment – particularly our respiratory clinical teams and particularly our cancer teams – have been particularly engaged but also concerned about the implications of having to focus on making sure that we have capacity in place for the increasing numbers of patients with Covid that are needing our care."