I think I can see light at the end of the Covid tunnel in East Sussex

Well, to my way of thinking, things are definitely looking up as far as SARS-CoV-2 in Sussex is concerned.

According to Hastings Council’s latest weekly on-line there were, last week, 25 patients with the virus across the East Sussex Healthcare Trust and one registered death with it mentioned on the death certificate.

Considering that the Trust offers health care to around 525,000 of the county’s residents the fact that just 25 of them were in either Bexhill, Eastbourne or the Conquest hospitals surely shows, at the very least, that this part of Sussex is well past the worst of the present health crisis. We should also remember that the primary cause for some of that number being in hospital in the first place was not actually the virus itself but down to a variety of other illnesses, such as strokes, heart attacks, dementia and so forth.

Also, when the number of deaths are quoted as having ‘Covid on the death certificate’ that does not necessarily mean that the virus was the main cause of the patient’s passing; it was simply mentioned somewhere on the certificate and was not, necessarily, what is termed the 1 Underlying Cause: as I understand the situation there are up to 20 causes that can be indicated in the Multiple Cause of Death Field, and this virus could be anywhere on the list: it might be the main cause but, equally, it could be the last and most minor.

I don’t think that we are quite at the point when we should all be singing, “Happy days are here again” but at least we can now definitely see the light at the end of what has been a very long the tunnel.

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