A HEALTH care assistant at Royal Bolton Hospital who has been awarded a British Empire Medal for services to the NHS during Covid-19 has said she was "shocked" to hear the news.

Andrea Greenall, who lives in Kearsley with her husband and their two children, was faced with the task of ensuring patients were safe and Covid-19 free to visit the hospital for their upcoming surgery.

Previously Andrea’s role would have seen patients come out to visit her for the pre-op assessment, but with lockdown guidelines still in place and surgery restarting it was necessary for the patients who could not attend the drive through swabbing centre to be visited in their homes to give them a Covid-19 swab and ensure they were fit for surgery.

Within a few days the new mobile swabbing team set off by car across the North West as they rushed to test as many patients as possible.

"Our job was to make sure they were comfortable and explain what would happen when they came in to hospital," said Andrea, 50. "We would also ring up the patients and give them their results and of course it wasn't always good news."

The success of the mobile swabbing team played a pivotal role in ensuring a smooth transition back to a restart for elective surgery, keeping waiting list times down and giving patients the confidence to return to the hospital environment.

Andrea said: "We weren't doing it for ourselves we were doing it for the patients and this was one of the ways we could keep things going.

"We just get on with it and dealt with it but you always have good days and bad days don't you? We all work as a big team and we are all part of the NHS."

The avid Bolton Wanderers fans, who said she is missing watching her side, received another award from her colleagues when they presented her with a special tiara befitting of her new status.

"I feel very relieved it is now public as I've had to keep it a secret for five weeks," she added. "I was very shocked and it all seems a bit surreal. My son has even gone into school saying they all need to bow to him."