A hospital boss says her staff are ready for the second wave of coronavirus but admitted normal services may have to be postponed again.

Louise Ashley, chief executive of the Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust which runs Darent Valley Hospital, said teams had been busy getting ready for a spike of new cases as lockdown 2.0 looms .

Ms Ashley said she hoped operations and the hospital's usual services would not be impacted this time around but could not guarantee they would not be stopped.

The government this week introduced a range of new restrictions limiting the number of people gathering to six households, working from home, upping fines and enforcing stricter rules for face coverings indoors and limiting opening hours for pubs, bars and restaurants.

Scientific and medical advisors also told the public unless action was taken now to stem the virus spreading yet again, there could be as many as 50,000 new cases every day by the middle of October .

This would threaten to overwhelm the NHS in similar ways to the first spike in March and April forcing regular hospital appointments and services to be postponed.

Speaking at the trust's annual general meeting (AGM) held online this afternoon, Ms Ashley said: "We don't really know what the second wave will look like and I don't think anybody does.

"We're very good at being prepared and we have a comprehensive policy including levels of Covid.

"There are four levels we're looking at with level four being the highest alert and most Covid patients.

"We are ready at any moment to reopen our incident room and Covid hub and enter our Covid levels of activity."

The trust has managed to keep cancer operations running throughout the pandemic so far and 88% of patients were seen within 62 days – beating the 85% target – throughout 2019 and 2020.

But many other services and surgery were forced to be cancelled to maintain space and safety around the hospital.

Ms Ashley added: "The difference with the second wave is we're really, really going to try to keep more services running during the peak.

"We don't know how that will go but we know people are waiting a long time for operations because we've had to stop over the last few months.

"We want to keep trying to keep things like operations and other other services running.

"We don't know if we'll be able to do that, to be frank, but what we do know is we will keep our patients safe and our staff safe throughout the period.

"We're ready to go whenever Covid is ready to arrive."

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