"Exceptionally busy” Royal Berkshire Hospital staff have had to create extra capacity in the intensive care unit due to a recent influx of Covid-19 patients.

That’s the message from Dominic Hardy, chief operating officer of Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust, who said staff are treating more people for the virus now than they were at the peak of the first wave.

There are now over 200 Covid-19 patients at the Reading hospital and more are expected to arrive in the coming weeks.

“This is definitely an exceptionally busy time,” said Mr Hardy. “We continue to see the usual winter pressures as well, so that creates a really challenging environment.

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“We are putting into place our escalation plans, born out of our experience from the first wave and our staff are responding fantastically well, as we’d expect.

“We’ve opened our additional capacity in the intensive care unit, so we are definitely working at a level that is well above normal.”

At the hospital, Covid-19 patients were occupying 83 beds on December 23.

But over the next seven days, that number more than doubled and by December 30, Covid-19 patients were occupying 179 beds and 18 of them were on mechanical ventilators.

“We coped well,” said Mr Hardy. “We had plans that we developed over the summer months after wave one of the pandemic and we put those into place to make sure we could accommodate all of those Covid-positive patients during that rapid increase.

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“We’ve also learnt quite a lot about how to treat patients, whether that’s by the drugs we prescribe routinely or approaches like using CIPAP (continuous positive airway pressure therapy)  – that’s the non-evasive ventilation we use.”

On December 31, the trust decided to suspend non-urgent procedures, such as hip and knee replacements, to focus on treating Covid-19 patients.

Mr Hardy said this is “regrettable” but emergency surgeries, urgent cancer surgeries and “essential diagnostic work” will continue.

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“We maintain a high level of safety for patients so if they are called for an appointment, we strongly encourage them to attend,” he said.

Some staff have had to work extra shifts in recent weeks or been redeployed to other wards, as demand for treatment continues to rise.

However, Mr Hardy insists staff morale is “good”.

“That’s not to say this is an easy time for our staff,” he added.

“We really value, very highly, the massive effort that they are going to, to make sure patients get really good care here.

“It is a really challenging time and I wouldn’t want to underestimate that. Equally, as we would expect, our staff are rising to the occasion and doing a phenomenal job.”