THE Isle of Wight has had 529 cases of coronavirus since the pandemic began — and 89 deaths — but how many patients have occupied beds at St Mary's Hospital?

The County Press has been looking at the Covid-19 NHS Situation data which reveals just that.

It shows the total beds occupied at the hospital by confirmed Covid-19 patients, since the outbreak began.

The first recorded patients, according to the data, occupied beds at St Mary's Hospital on March 23 — the day Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the national lockdown.

However, a patient death was recorded by the hospital on March 22, the day before.

Read more: Heartbroken widow was unable to say goodbye

By March 25 there were 12 patients, which fell by six the next day before gradually creeping up over the first few days of April.

On April 4, there were 15 patients, which went up to 20 patients on April 13, and hit a peak of 22 patients on April 27.

Numbers in beds were in the high teens throughout early May, dropping to ten by May 21, and hovered around that figure for the remainder of the month.

On June 1 there were eight Covid-19 patients in beds, and on June 7 the number had fallen to four.

By July 16, there were no Covid-19 patients, and numbers remained on either two, one, or none, right through to September.

There were none at all from September 12 to October 1.

That is when the data finishes, until the next update, due mid-November.

There was one patient in hospital on October 8, the Isle of Wight NHS Trust revealed at a public meeting, but no news on numbers of patients in beds has been confirmed since.

A total of 41 patients have died at St Mary's Hospital with Covid-19, according to the trust.

The most patients on Mechanical Ventilation (MV) beds was six, in early April, and there has only been one patient on an MV bed since April 29 (on July 2). (NB: The stats only show up to October 1).

The County Press has asked the Isle of Wight NHS Trust for regular updates on numbers of Covid patients in St Mary's Hospital.

However, while all trusts across the UK are submitting data daily to government, it is only being publicly released centrally.

NHS England publish a daily admissions spreadsheet but it is only broken down by region — with the Isle of Wight included in the figures for South East England.

A spokesperson for the Isle of Wight NHS Trust said: "Our patients and staff are our top priority and should we experience a rise in Covid-19 patients in hospital, we are fully prepared to provide care and treatment safely.

"Dealing with the crisis since March means we have a wealth of experience from increasing our capacity quickly to providing services while wearing PPE and implementing important infection control measures.

"We are here to meet the needs of the Island community."