Colchester General Hospital was put on "red alert" as staff struggled to cope with admissions.

And the situation last night (Monday) meant bosses had to call on other hospitals to help ease the pressure.

This is only the second time this winter that the green, amber, red, "traffic light" system, monitored by the ambulance service, has reached "red" at a hospital in north-east Essex.

An outbreak of sickness and diarrhoea on two wards at Clacton Hospital meant it could no longer admit elderly patients from Colchester General, who are normally transferred for rehabilitation. This had a knock-on effect at the Turner Road hospital, leading to a bed shortage.

A spokesman for Essex Rivers Healthcare Trust said: "We are hoping to manage this situation through our own bed resources and are doing so at the moment. The nearest hospitals to us are Broomfield in Chelmsford and Ipswich Hospital, but they are also under a lot of pressure."

He said: "We are maintaining urgent operations and our waiting list commitments in terms of operations, but non-urgent elective operations may have to be cancelled. We hope the situation will ease in the next couple of days."

A North-East Essex Health Authority spokesman said such a situation was "unusual" but would usually be balanced out over 24 hours.

He said: "Red is when the pressure of demand reaches such an extent that the hospital needs help from other hospitals in the area."

The spokesman said "red" was not based on the number of patients, but a judgement of how busy the department was.

"The ambulance service monitors the system and looks at those people who are between two hospitals and who need to be admitted.

"With the agreement of the hospital on "red" the ambulance will take this patient to the other hospital, rather than the one which is busy."

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