{"id":787832,"date":"2026-09-30T21:22:28","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T21:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/787832\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T21:22:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T21:22:28","slug":"william-harvey-hospital-hopes-pressure-will-ease-within-48-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/787832\/","title":{"rendered":"William Harvey Hospital hopes pressure will ease within 48 hours"},"content":{"rendered":"

The chief nurse of a Kent hospital which declared a critical incident saying all its beds were occupied says it is hoped pressures will ease in the next 24 to 48 hours. <\/p>\n

East Kent Hospitals NHS declared a critical incident on Monday and warned anyone going to the William Harvey Hospital, in Ashford, to be ready for an “extremely long wait”.<\/p>\n

Speaking to BBC Radio Kent<\/a>, Sarah Hayes, chief nursing and midwifery officer, said demand had increased over the past few days and the trust was beginning to see some patients with flu and other seasonal infections.<\/p>\n

She said all beds were occupied by patients who needed care and emergency departments were seeing more people arriving for treatment. <\/p>\n

Hayes said services faced more pressures as winter approached, adding: “We’re starting to head into the flu season, so we’re starting to see some people with flu and other infections coming in.<\/p>\n

“So more pressure on our emergency department, more people attending there, but also people who need to stay in our beds probably longer who are more unwell, she told the BBC. <\/p>\n

“We obviously can’t discharge people until we need to. There are some people who can go home and therefore we’re working really hard with our other colleagues across Kent and Medway to get those people home.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The chief nurse of a Kent hospital which declared a critical incident saying all its beds were occupied…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":787833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-787832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}