Harrogate hospital chief executive racially abused by England fan

The man in charge of Harrogate District Hospital has been racially abused by England fans on his way home tonight.

Steve Russell, chief executive of Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust, tweeted about the incident shortly after England’s 2-0 win over Germany.

He said that a woman shouted “I’m proud to be white and British because we’re better than people like you”.

Mr Russell is in charge of more than 2,000 staff who have been at the forefront of the fight against covid in the district over the past 15 months.

He has spoken about racism encountered in previous interviews, saying he had been told to “get back in my banana boat” while at school.

He has also said BAME colleagues deserve to be treated better.

Mr Russell’s tweet to his almost 4,500 followers prompted an avalanche of supportive responses.

One said the comment was “utterly vile”, another said “awful and just plain old barbaric” while another person said he hoped Mr Russell pointed out that most of England’s goals have been scored by Jamaican-born Raheem Sterling.

Nice. Just walked home in Harrogate. People celebrating the #EnglandvGermany win and a woman slurred ‘I’m proud to be white and British because we’re better than people like you’ at me.

Charming.

— #hellomynameis Steve (he/him) 💙 (@steve_r76) June 29, 2021

 

Read more:

 

TV star Nick Knowles hails jailing of Harrogate hospital bike thieves

TV presenter Nick Knowles has hailed the news that thieves have been jailed for stealing bicycles belonging to NHS staff at Harrogate District Hospital.

Mr Knowles, who stars in DIY SOS, offered to buy a new bike for Naresh Gnanasekaran, a doctor at the hospital whose bike was stolen during the first wave of covid in April last year.

Halfords eventually agreed to give Dr Gnanasekaran a new electric bike for free.

Last week John Roddy, 24, from Headingley, Leeds and his partner-in-crime, who could be named for legal reasons, were jailed for stealing bikes worth almost £7,000 from 11 NHS workers in Harrogate and Leeds.

The court heard Roddy had battled drug addiction.

Most of the thefts occurred outside Harrogate District Hospital when staff were having to deal with huge workloads due to the pandemic, said prosecutor Chris Moran.

Mr Moran said one NHS worker in Harrogate had been so “damaged” by the theft of her £400 bike she no longer cycled to work.

Michael Smith, a consultant at the hospital, tagged Mr Knowles in a tweet that contained a link to the Stray Ferret article about the two men being jailed.

Mr Knowles replied that he was glad the men were caught and thankful to the NHS for their efforts over the last 18 months.

I do
Glad your guy got his bike replaced
Glad they were caught
Sad what drugs do to peoples lives and judgement
Thanks to all your colleagues for all you e done over the last 18 months

— Nick Knowles (@MrNickKnowles) June 25, 2021

Read more:

 

Harrogate Hospital Radio wins three-year fight for FM licence

Harrogate Hospital Radio is preparing to go on to the FM airwaves after earning a licence on its third attempt in three years.

It will be a major step for the station when it starts to broadcast for the first time on 95.3FM from 9am on September 1.

The charity radio station, which has been keeping hospital staff and patients entertained since October 1977, has had a long journey to get to this point.

Read more:

Mark Oldfield, Harrogate Hospital Radio’s chairman, was knocked back by regulator Ofcom twice, but took the loss of Stray FM as a reason to take up the fight again.

He started a petition to drum up support, which was signed by nearly 400 people, and said:

“I can’t begin to tell you what this means to Harrogate Hospital Radio. An awful lot of hard work has gone into our submission.

“I’d like to thank MP Andrew Jones and Harrogate Hospital Radio NHS Trust chair Angela Schofield, and its chief executive, Steve Russell, for their support.

“Early this year, I was invited to resubmit my application and, finally, at the end of May, I got a call from Ofcom to inform me my application had been successful.

Harrogate District Hospital now has 300 FM radios so even more patients will be able to listen to Harrogate Hospital Radio.

The chairman hopes that it will become the dedicated radio station for not only the hospital, but the surrounding area as well.

Thieves who stole NHS workers’ bikes at Harrogate hospital jailed

Two prolific thieves who stole thousands of pounds worth of bikes from NHS workers in Harrogate at the height of the covid pandemic have been jailed for a combined eight years.

John Roddy and his partner-in-crime, who cannot be named for legal reasons at this stage, stole the bicycles from outside hospitals in Harrogate and York between May and October last year.

Just under £7,000 of bikes were stolen from 11 victims, many of whom were working flat out for the NHS during the covid crisis, York Crown Court heard.

Most of the thefts occurred outside Harrogate District Hospital when staff were having to deal with huge workloads due to the pandemic, said prosecutor Chris Moran.

Mr Moran said one NHS worker in Harrogate had been so “damaged” by the theft of her £400 bike that she no longer cycled to work.

Read more:

Other hospital workers had been left “extremely distressed” by the incidents at a time of national emergency. 

Two of the thefts occurred outside York District Hospital, when Roddy and his sidekick, both drug addicts, stole bikes worth over £1,000.

Some of the bikes stolen from Harrogate were worth over £1,000 and had been locked, but the thieves are thought to have used cutting equipment. One of the bikes was valued at £2,000.

Mr Moran said:

“These victims were extremely distressed given that they were NHS workers.

“One woman said she didn’t even cycle to work anymore. This was targeting of NHS staff at the height of the pandemic.”

12-hour shifts

The Harrogate woman had been working 12-hour shifts and was “emotionally and physically drained” after working flat out for half a day when she found her bike had been stolen from outside the hospital.  

Roddy, 24, and his cohort, a 33-year-old man from Leeds, appeared for sentence on Thursday after each pleaded guilty to 11 counts of theft.  

Roddy’s co-accused was also sentenced for handling thousands of pounds worth of stolen goods in a separate incident in 2018 and another theft in April 2020.

All but nine of the bike thefts occurred at hospitals. Two other bicycles were stolen outside a supermarket and a bakery. 

Read more:

The court heard that Roddy, from Headingley, Leeds, had nine previous convictions for offences including vehicle and bike thefts and was subject to a court order at the time he targeted the hospitals in Harrogate and York. His partner-in-crime had a worse criminal record, which included “numerous” thefts and burglaries. 

Kristian Kavanagh, for Roddy, said his client had battled drug addiction.

Sarah Barlow, for Roddy’s co-defendant, said her client also had a long-standing drug habit. 

Judge Simon Hickey said: 

“This was targeted criminality of high-value items that were particularly cared for by NHS workers in the main (when they) were working their shifts.

“Both of you were stealing over a period of five months (and) the victims lost just short of £7,000 of goods.”

He said that “numerous victims” had been highly distressed by the thefts and the woman who had been working 12-hour shifts was now “damaged”.

Roddy, who skipped bail following the offences, was jailed for three years and one month. His co-defendant was jailed for five years.

Harrogate hospital emergency department treating ‘unsustainable’ patient numbers

A senior consultant at Harrogate District Hospital has urged people not to visit the emergency department unless necessary due to an ‘unprecedented’ number of patients.

Dr Helen Law, a consultant in emergency medicine, spoke after figures revealed the number of people seeking treatment had risen by 23 per cent compared with two years ago.

Over seven days from June 1 this year, 1,115 patients attended the emergency department compared with 939 patients during the same period in 2019, pre-covid.

The figures were released by West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts, which represents six NHS trusts in Yorkshire. The six trusts together have seen an average rise in the number of emergency patients over the same period of 17%.

Read more:

Dr Law said:

“We are seeing unprecedented numbers of people seeking treatment at our hospital and I know the situation is the same across West Yorkshire.

“We are highlighting this because at the current rate it is simply not sustainable to treat this many people on any long-term basis.

“Emergency departments are seeing significant numbers of patients seeking treatment for issues that are non-emergencies.

“Everyone in the NHS is here because we want to make people better and no one would ever say, ‘Don’t come to hospital’.

“But I would urge anyone planning on coming to the emergency department to ask themselves: ‘Is this an emergency?'”

The increase in patients is not believed to be linked to coronavirus.

The number of covid patients has remained low at Harrogate District Hospital over summer and currently number just three.

Number of covid patients in North Yorkshire hospitals almost doubles in a week

The number of covid patients in North Yorkshire’s hospitals has almost doubled in the last week.

Senior health officials are urging people to continue to get the vaccine as cases in the county continue to surge.

Amanda Bloor, accountable officer for NHS North Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Group told a meeting of North Yorkshire’s Local Resilience Forum today that there had been a jump in the number of patients in the last seven days.

She said: 

“We have seen that the number of patients who have covid in our hospitals has risen over the last week.

“As of yesterday there were 23 patients in our hospitals and that figure is up from 12 this time last week so we have seen an increase of 11 patients.”

The numbers include six patients in York Hospital and three in Harrogate. There are currently no covid patients at Scarborough Hospital.

Read more:

The rise in patients comes as the Delta variant of covid continues to spread throughout North Yorkshire, particularly in those under 30, with the number of cases having tripled in a fortnight.

The current infection rates per 100,000 in the county are 139 in Selby, 124 in Craven, 108 in Richmondshire, 91 in Harrogate, 51 in Ryedale, 44 in Hambleton and 28 in Scarborough.

The overall rate for North Yorkshire is now 81. At the start of June, the county’s rate per 100,000 people was just 18.

Mrs Bloor said everyone who was eligible for a vaccine, which is now all over 18s, should come forward to get the jab.

She said: 

“We all know how important vaccination is.

“Anything that all of us can do to encourage any of our friends, colleagues, families and people in our communities who have not felt able to come forward yet and take their vaccine [will help].

“We can see from the numbers in our communities and from the numbers of patients in hospitals that the most effective weapon against covid is to have a vaccine and have two doses.

“It may not prevent you from getting the disease itself but it will prevent you from becoming seriously unwell and potentially requiring hospital treatment and stay in hospital.”

Mrs Bloor added that “there was still a link” between the rise in infections and hospitalisations and it had not yet been broken.

So far, 355,012 people have had two doses of a covid vaccine in North Yorkshire according to Public Health England figures.

Harrogate district covid infections hit four-month high

The Harrogate district has recorded the highest daily number of covid infections for four months.

Today’s 29 cases is the highest since February 17 when 31 infections were recorded, according to Public Health England statistics.

But no covid-related deaths have been reported at Harrogate District Hospital since April 11.

According to NHS England statistics, the death toll at the hospital remains at 179.

Read more:

Elsewhere, the district’s seven-day covid rate is marginally up to 59 cases per 100,000 people.

The North Yorkshire average is 45 and the England average is 75.

According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the Delta variant is now the dominant strain of coronavirus in North Yorkshire and most cases are among under 30-year-olds.

Louise Wallace told a North Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum briefing today that the variant – which was first identified in India and has delayed the final lifting of lockdown restrictions – was accelerating in most parts of the county at a rate of around 40 new cases per day.

She added the strain appeared to be spreading fastest amongst young people, who she  urged to take vaccines. Jabs are now available to over 21-year-olds.

Ms Wallace said:

“The Delta variant does appear – as is the case nationally – to be the dominant strain of covid across North Yorkshire.

“In light of that, it is really important that given the variant is more transmissible we don’t let our guard down.”

No covid deaths at Harrogate hospital for two months

No deaths of patients who tested positive for covid have been recorded at Harrogate District Hospital for two months.

According to latest NHS England figures, the last covid-related death was reported on April 11.

It means the death toll from coronavirus at Harrogate hospital since the start of the pandemic remains at 179.

A further nine covid cases have been reported in the Harrogate district, according to Public Health England figures.

Read more:

It takes the total number of infections since March 2020 to 7,881.

Meanwhile, the district’s seven-day covid rate stands at 42 per 100,000 people.

The North Yorkshire average is 35 and the rate for England is 60.

No covid deaths at Harrogate hospital for six weeks

Harrogate District Hospital has gone six weeks without reporting a covid death.

According to NHS England figures, the last death from a patient who tested positive for covid was recorded on April 11.

It means the death toll at the hospital since last March remains at 179.

Meanwhile, a further three cases of covid have been reported in the Harrogate district.

Read more:

Latest Public Health England data shows that 7,740 cases have been recorded since the start of the pandemic.

The daily number of cases reported is based on PCR and lateral flow tests returning positive results. However, if someone with a positive lateral flow test later has a negative result with a PCR test, the earlier result will be removed.

Elsewhere, the district’s seven-day covid rate stands at 11 per 100,000 people.

In North Yorkshire, the average is 13 and the England rate is 22.

Harrogate hospital will not reopen walk-in service for hearing aid clinic

Harrogate District Hospital will not reopen its hearing aid repair clinic as a walk-in service despite the easing of coronavirus restrictions.

The clinic closed its doors to become a postal-only service early on in the pandemic, a move which has now become permanent.

Hospital bosses said the change had been well received by patients.

If the audiology team is unable to resolve a problem remotely then they will offer a short repair appointment. The team will not be able to help anyone without an appointment.

Anyone who needs a repair or new equipment should call 01423 553320 or send the team an email.

Read more:

This postal-only service has been in place for many years in Ripon, York and Scarborough. It brings Harrogate into line with the wider service.

Christine Brindle, the lead audiologist at the hospital, said:

“We’ve chosen to move in line with our wider service across the county and switch to a postal service first and foremost.

“This helps reduce the number of people coming into the hospital who don’t have to. It also means patients don’t have to make the journey to come in.

“Before the pandemic we’d often see queues of 30 to 40 people, which isn’t now appropriate. This change has actually been well-received by the majority of patients.”