Today's National Day of Reflection marks a year since the start of the first lockdown. Steve Russell, chief executive of Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust, writes for the Stray Ferret about how the trust has responded. 

Today marks the one-year anniversary of our first national lockdown. This past year has been such a challenge for everyone – not just in the NHS but across our all of our communities. It’s impacted on absolutely everyone in a way that so many of us have never before experienced.

Last week, we also marked the one-year anniversary of our first confirmed inpatient with coronavirus. It’s important we reflect on what our teams have pulled together to deliver since the pandemic began a year ago.

A year on, we have treated just over 800 patients who have suffered with covid. Of those, 600 people have been supported through kind and compassionate care and have been discharged home, but sadly 183 patients lost their lives in the pandemic at our hospitals.

Our community discharge team has supported over 4,500 discharges home during this time, providing the equivalent of 7,000 bed days in patients’ own homes.

Our district nursing services adapted and continued to provide outstanding care to patients in their own homes. They have carried out over 113,000 face-to-face contacts and our specialist care teams have added a further 5,000.

Our 0-19 services (health visiting and school nursing) also had to adapt their ways of working but have continued to support 102,000 children and pregnant mothers during this time. They adjusted the type of support they offer as well as trying to safeguard against increasing levels of risk, which lockdown tragically caused.

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Read more:

• The Bishop of Ripon writes today about the past year and why she has kept an abiding sense of hope.


• Take a look round harrogate Hospital's new ICU after its £1 million refurb.

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I’d like to say a heartfelt thank you to all of my colleagues across the trust and our partner organisations for their incredible efforts over the past year.

It now feels like an opportunity to look forward. Spring is officially here, the weather is getting warmer, more and more people are having the vaccine and we are easing out of lockdown. We can be really optimistic about getting back to something that more resembles ‘normal’.

That said, we can’t become complacent and we have to bear in mind that covid isn’t just going to disappear.

We will be living in a world where it exists but will be much more manageable. We already know so much more about it than we did at this point last year.

Please, keep following social distancing guidelines, wear a mask, wash your hands. If we’re all still doing this, it’s the quickest route back to doing the lovely things that we really want to do in life.