Patients at hospitals in north Essex will be able to have a visitor during their stay after restrictions were relaxed. 

Patients at hospitals run by East Suffolk and North Essex Trust, including Colchester, CLacton and Fryatt, will be able to have a visitor from Monday.

It comes after the majority of ward visiting had to be suspended at the beginning of the year due to the impact of Covid. 

Ward visiting slots will open in all of the trust's hospitals on Monday, February 14  and not before.

A patient’s nominated key contact is asked not to call to book their visits until then. 

A number of rules will be in place to keep everyone safe. 

They are:

  • One named visitor may visit a patient for one hour a day after they have been in hospital for 24 hours. This does not apply to visiting in exceptional or compassionate circumstances, such as end of life care where more open visiting is in place
  • Visitors are urged to be vaccinated (two doses) and, ideally, boosted against Covid-19 and to take a rapid lateral flow test (LFT) for Covid-19 on the day of their visit

Chief executive Nick Hulme said: “I’m delighted that we are now able to cautiously reintroduce visiting in all our hospital sites.

“We recognise the significant upset not having visitors can cause to patients and their families and suspending visiting is never an easy decision for us. However, our priority is always to keep everyone safe, whether they’re in our care, visiting someone they love, or they’re at work.

“That’s why we remain cautious and why we are insisting certain precautions are taken by visitors, including taking a lateral flow test before coming to our hospitals and being vaccinated against COVID-19.

“As ever, we will keep all our decisions around visiting under constant review.”

Giles Thorpe, the trust’s chief nurse, added: "We are hugely grateful to our patients and their families for their patience and understanding while visiting has been suspended.

“We have kept the policy under weekly review and although we still have Covid-19 inpatients in our wards, we want to slowly reintroduce some visiting to support patient wellbeing, reassure their loved ones and support our staff too.

“We must continue to have measures in place though to keep everyone safe – including those who are extremely vulnerable or have weakened immune systems – when they’re in our hospitals.

“That’s why we’re asking visitors to, ideally, be vaccinated against Covid-19 and to take a test for the virus before they visit. Testing will help to detect asymptomatic infection where someone will have no symptoms but can still infect others.

“We know that no vaccine is 100 per cent effective in preventing infection, but what we do know about the COVID-19 vaccine now is that it provides a high degree of protection from serious disease, while also providing protection from being infected in some cases.

“Please help us to keep our patients and staff safe and only visit if you are vaccinated and symptom free. Thank you for your support.”