"Nothing to be honest with you. ..."

Like many parts of the UK we have been seeing high levels of a virus causing sickness and diarrhoea in our local community for some weeks. These viruses are often brought into hospitals by patients, who may not show symptoms until after their admission, visitors and staff. When they come into any environment where there are large numbers of people, such as hospitals, schools, colleges, they can spread rapidly.

When we encounter such outbreaks in our hospitals we immediately put strict infection control procedures into place and isolate patients and wards to minimise the risk of the virus spreading further. When an area has had no patients with symptoms for 48 hrs it is thoroughly cleaned before being reopened. At the same time, we ask visitors to keep visits to a minimum to help us reduce the likelihood of further outbreaks and to protect patients who may be more susceptible to this type of virus.

Our cleaning services teams do strive to maintain the highest standards of cleanliness and take very seriously any individual instances where patients or visitors feel these have not been met. We do encourage them to notify a member of staff so that our rapid response teams can quickly deal with any problems.