HEALTH services in Gwent are not close to the stage of recovering from the disruption and demands imposed by the coronavirus crisis, a report warns.

With governments across the UK planning and implementing - to increasingly divergent timetables - measures to ease lockdown restrictions and get society and the economy moving again, the NHS is looking at how services suspended or limited more than two months ago can be resumed.

In common with the rest of the NHS in Wales and the wider UK, non-urgent surgery and outpatient appointments across a range of specialties were suspended at Gwent hospitals and clinics in March. Face-to-face GP consultations were minimised, diagnostic testing scaled back, and performance targets relaxed.

All were measures necessary to protect patients - many of whom have underlying conditions - from the threat of contracting coronavirus, and to free up staff, beds and wards for the frontline battle against the new disease.

That battle continues - but these services must resume at some point, and function against the backdrop of an ongoing threat from coronavirus.

Health boards in Wales are beginning to plan for this eventuality. Details are currently thin on the ground, but they must work out how to recreate the theatre and bed capacity necessary for non-urgent surgery, and the clinic space for consultations and tests, while maintaining patient and staff safety.

There is too, the continuing need to treat coronavirus patients. Though the peak may have passed, and admissions and deaths due to the disease are falling, there remains a need to maintain capacity for this new and challenging aspect of healthcare - and it must run alongside the many other services the NHS provides.

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Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, in a report presented to board members, laid out a three-phase approach to planning and managing coronavirus and non-coronavirus demand and capacity.

Phase one has been about managing the initial peak of infections, and phase two involves re-establishing non-emergency services. Phase three will encompass planning for next winter.

The health board "has already begun planning the next phases of response to COVID-19 with particular focus on phase two and the resetting of the system", states the report.

This however, has the ongoing coronavirus situation much in mind, and involves looking at "the services that it can restart prior to any further peak in COVID-19 demand". Such a plan must also determine the "triggers and escalation process for future peaks in COVID-19".

"The health board is currently preparing its phase two plan which will set out in detail the site and service plans for the next few months in the context of the uncertainties presented by COVID-19 and government interventions," states the report.

But it acknowledges that "the health board does not currently assess itself as close to a recovery phase where business as usual will be resumed."