Harrogate Hospital Covid death first since April

Harrogate Hospital has recorded its first Coronavirus death since 11 April

A coronavirus patient has died at Harrogate hospital for the first time in more than four months.

The patient's death on Monday is the first at the hospital since 11 April and brings its total since the pandemic began to 180.

It comes as the number of patients in the county's hospitals rose from 109 last week to 121 over the weekend.

Amanda Bloor, from the North Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Group, described the increase as "quite a sharp rise".

She told a meeting of the county's Local Resilience Forum on Wednesday that most of these patients had been hospitalised over the weekend.

Of those 23 are in intensive care.

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Ms Bloor said: "Over the course of last week we did see quite a sharp decrease in the number of patients with Covid in hospital, but over the weekend we had quite a sharp rise."

She also urged younger people who had not taken up the offer of a vaccine to come forward, said the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

"We are seeing younger people getting Covid who do need to be admitted to hospital for treatment and they are sometimes becoming quite poorly," she said.

"So please do not delay getting the vaccine. It is the single most important thing that you can do to protect yourself."Latest figures show around 578,000 people in all age groups across North Yorkshire and York have now received a first vaccine dose and 514,000 people their second.