Liverpool's hospitals are still facing major challenges as they battle against the impact of Covid-19.
The city's main hospital trust - which includes The Royal Liverpool and Aintree Hospitals - has been at the forefront of the fight against the virus throughout the pandemic.
Hospital staff are currently facing their fourth wave of virus patients, although thankfully the vaccine effect has improved the situation compared with previous waves.
Read more: Positive covid tests drop in Liverpool City Region
That said, there are still a large number of covid patients being treated at Liverpool's main hospitals.
The ECHO understands that the latest figures show a total of 115 covid admissions across the trust - which is an increase from the 103 patients recorded a week ago.
Of those 115 patients, 17 are so severely ill that they have been admitted to Intensive Care Units.
The numbers in ICU have been shifting between 10 and 20 for the past couple of months and while doctors will be relieved to see those numbers not increasing, they will be hoping they soon start to consistently fall.
Speaking about the current situation, one senior ICU doctor told the ECHO: "From our point of view, in terms of patients, things have plateaued a bit, this has been pretty flat for about two weeks. Difficult to know which way things are going to go."
"Actually the pressures on the hospital are not totally to do with Covid patients, there are lots of patients coming to the Emergency Department and not many beds on the wards, so we have a queue of patients waiting to leave ICU."
Speaking about the covid patients who are being admitted, the doctor said: "We have seen mostly unvaccinated Covid patients, they are mainly young so maybe didn't think they would be at risk, Or people who may not have had easy access to vaccine."
He said there is a particular worry around pregnant women, adding: "What has been worrying is that we have admitted a few pregnant women with Covid who haven't had the vaccine, I think it is difficult for them as at first the advice for pregnant women was quite confusing but I would say they definitely should have it."
Staff at the trust are now into their 18th month of tackling Covid-19 and the doctor said people are exhausted and that morale is not good.
He said: "Morale is not great because everyone has had enough of Covid by now and we are wondering if the cases will go down enough that we can run a relatively normal unit and hospital.
"It feels like people's heads have dropped a bit when this all started again. I think a lot of staff were hoping not to have yet another influx of patients with COVID. Quite a few staff have left after the last wave as they had had enough."
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