Health board suspends non-essential visiting to ALL of its hospitals

Hywel Dda health board which runs health services in Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion has said that they are temporarily suspending non-essential visiting to all of their hospital sites due to increased levels of COVID infection.

The move covers hospitals including Prince Phillip Hospital in Llanelli, Glangwili Hospital in Carmarthen and Withybush Hospital in Haverfordwest.

In an online statement the health board said: “Due to increased cases of Covid-19 in hospital and the community, the decision has been made to temporarily suspend visiting to all hospitals with immediate effect.

“Visiting will only be permitted with prior arrangement in extenuating circumstances, such as end of life and critical visits.

“The restrictions being introduced today do not affect the current visiting arrangements within our maternity services.

“All visitors must carry out a lateral flow device (LFD) test at home prior to travelling to the hospital.”

The health board added: “When visiting our hospitals please remember to wear a face covering, this will be replaced by a surgical face mask at reception or ward entrance. Please remember to maintain social distancing and to clean your hands on entering the building and as often as possible using soap and water or hand sanitiser.

“We appreciate that it is a difficult time for everyone, and we will continue to support the wellbeing of our patients/service users and their families and loved ones in the best way we can, while keeping everyone as safe as possible.

“Our patient support team and family liaison officers can help to deliver essential items to patients from their family and facilitate communication through digital options/telephone; if you need their assistance please call them on and 0300 0200 159 and they will do their best to help you.

“The situation is being reviewed at regular intervals and a further update will be made to visitor restrictions as soon as it is safe to do so.

“Thank you to everyone for supporting our visitor restrictions to protect our patients and our NHS.”

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