The island’s emergency out-of-hours health service will be reopening on its usual hours from tonight.

This follows the Manx Emergency Doctors Service (MEDS), which deals with patients at Noble’s Hospital when GPs’ surgeries are shut, cutting its hours for the past two nights due to unavailability of key staff.

An answerphone message was signposting callers to alternative services that could help them, and Manx Care asked members of the public to consider whether the reason they were calling could wait until their GP opened in the morning, and if not, to make their way to the emergency department.

According to Manx Care, the temporary closure impacted only a small number of people.

From this evening, MEDS will be operating as usual from 6pm to 8am.

Members of the public are asked to continue to choose well based on their condition, and ensure they are aware of all options available to them.

More information can be found on our signposting pages: https://www.gov.im/categories/health-and-wellbeing/signposting/

If you think that you have a life-threatening emergency, you should always call 999. This service operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.