THE chief executive of Worcestershire's hospital trust is urging anyone with information on a break-in at Kidderminster Hospital - "if they care about their local NHS" - to come forward.

A large group of teenagers smashed their way into the town's hospital in the early hours of Sunday morning (March 22), setting off 20 fire extinguishers and breaking equipment.

The yobs smashed the glass doors to the hospital at around 1am, forcing staff to leave wards, where they were caring for patients, to deal with the incident.

Kidderminster Hospital is currently on lockdown to protect patients from coronavirus.

Inspector Dave King, from West Mercia Police, said afterwards: "At this very challenging time for our health care system and wider emergency services, it is unacceptable for anyone to tamper, destroy or in any way hamper the effectiveness of hospital equipment or ambulances.

"This behaviour will not be tolerated."

Now, the hospital trust's chief executive has issued a plea to members of the public to report any relevant information to police.

Matthew Hopkins, from Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “At a time when our NHS is facing one of the biggest challenges in its history, it is shameful that anyone should sink so low as to deliberately damage hospital property, wasting precious staff time and scarce health service resources in the process.

“Someone in the local community knows who is responsible for this particularly mindless piece of vandalism and if they care about their local NHS I urge them to share any information they have with the police immediately.”

Anyone who knows the identities of the vandals, or has car dash cam footage in the area from between 12.30am and 2am on Sunday, should call police on 101, quoting crime number 0020s.