THE surge in coronavirus cases in Worcestershire is not expected to hit its peak for at least another two weeks, hospital bosses have warned.

Paul Brennan, chief operating officer at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said the number of positive Covid cases had risen “quite significantly” in the last ten days and did not expect the surge to hit its peak until at least January 29.

The infection rate in Worcestershire had just been under 600 cases per 100,000 people in the most recent figures, Mr Brennan explained, having been below 200 cases per 100,000 people before Christmas.

“You can see the scale of the rise. [The infection rate] has dropped slightly to 560 but I wouldn’t take any pleasure or optimism from that,” he told the hospital trust’s board during its monthly meeting on Thursday (January 14).

“I think it is just a one-off.”

“And our predictions at the moment have moved back. We were previously thinking that the peak would be around January 22 but we now think that it will likely materialise around the 29th or 30th.

“We are expecting to see around another 12 to 14 days of increasing prevalence in the community and therefore presentation into hospital.

“The community prevalence and then translation into hospital is currently running at around about 11 days behind.”

Mr Brennan said he also expected the high infection rate to show little change once it hit its peak and it would take as long as 20 days before any “significant decline.”

“In terms of comparison to the first wave [in October], what we saw was quite a rapid rise, we hit a peak, and then the decline was not as rapid … but it was clear and quite significant.

“At the moment, our predictions are that when we do reach the peak we will probably actually plateau for around 14 to 20 days before we see any significant decline.”

The latest figures revealed by the hospital trust showed there had been 219 new cases in the last week, with an average of 31 a day.

A total of 119 people had been discharged – around 17 a day on average – and 64 people had died in a week.

Mr Brennan said around nine people a day in Worcestershire’s hospitals had died from Covid on average last week.

He added that as of yesterday (January 14), 215 people were in hospital in Worcestershire with coronavirus – of which 24 people were in critical care.

The trust said there are currently 40 intensive care beds across its hospitals in Worcester and Redditch.

So far 60 staff had been redeployed to support critical care units across the two hospitals.