VISITORS are still banned from a ward at the Alex Hospital almost three weeks after an outbreak of diarrhoea and vomiting (d&v).

Several wards at the hospital were closed to new patients and the whole hospital shut to ward visitors after increasing numbers of patients came down with a bug which, in some serious cases, was diagnosed as the Norovirus.

Operations had to be cancelled and visitors are still being discouraged from going into hospital and are being asked not to take children at all.

A spokesman for Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust said: “We have one ward still affected at the Alex, and on that basis we are still discouraging visitors, although as always we remain sensitive to people’s needs.

“The d&v outbreak has nothing to do with ‘dirty wards’ – these are bugs which are common in the community which can spread rapidly in environments likes schools, hospitals etc and one of the reasons for the visiting ban was to reduce the risk of visitors with these infections bringing them in.

“Isolating patients with d&v symptoms, rigorous cleaning procedures, visiting restrictions etc are all part of a range of measures available to our infection prevention and control team and we have well established plans in place to control outbreaks of this nature.

“Patient safety has been our priority throughout and will remain so.”