NHS bosses urge Bolton residents NOT to go to A&E for COVID-19 tests
More than 100 have turned up at the Royal Bolton Hospital over the past couple of days
Last updated 16th Sep 2020
As the health care system struggles to cope with soaring demand, people have been turning up to accident and emergency to ask for Covid-19 tests.
Bolton NHS Foundation Trust said on Tuesday that a "high volume'' of patients arrived to the A&E requesting tests.
Trust chair Professor Donna Hall said people in Bolton - which has the highest infection rate in England - had been trying to get tests via their GPs and the hospital when they could not get them online or at mobile testing units.
She told the BBC: "We had 100 people in our accident and emergency unit today, five ambulances queuing outside.
"This failure of the test and trace system is placing huge pressure on the NHS and social care.''
Prof Hall said the situation now is different to March when they had extra staff drafted in and were not expected to continue with planned operations.
She said: "We're seeing wards full of people. We've now got 30 people who are Covid-positive and we've got five people in our high dependency unit so this is not going away, this virus is not going away.''
Asked if there was more that could have been done to avoid this situation, she said: "I've felt that there has been a real lack of a cohesive strategy for the whole containment of Covid-19 and for test and trace.''
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