One clinician said infection rates amongst staff had trebled in recent weeks at Gloucestershire Royal and Cheltenham General hospitals. Kerry Holden, from Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust, said masks would help prevent “unnecessary sickness”.
The latest UK figures show an estimated 2.3 million people have the virus. Ms Holden, the trust’s deputy director of infection prevention and control, said preventing staff sickness was “definitely one of the main drivers” for reintroducing the mask rules.
“When we see staff having to go off sick or transmission between staff within the hospital setting it does leave our wards significantly short of staff,” she said. “That means that we’re not able to provide the care that we want to deliver to our patients,” she added. The figures show the number of Covid-19 infections has been gradually rising in the since the start of June but the number of people admitted to an intensive care or high dependency unit remains very low.