Parts of NHS may be overwhelmed by Covid wave,
admits Boris Johnson
PM says England can ‘ride out’ Omicron without
lockdown but acknowledges service is under huge pressure
Rowena
Mason and Denis Campbell
Tue 4 Jan
2022 20.15 GMT
Parts of
the NHS may be overwhelmed in the coming weeks, Boris Johnson has admitted for
the first time as he insisted England can “ride out” its biggest ever Covid
wave “without shutting down our country once again”.
The prime
minister acknowledged the health service is under huge pressure after four more
NHS trusts – all outside London – declared critical incidents amid rising staff
absences and Covid patients. On Tuesday evening hospitals across Greater
Manchester announced some non-urgent surgery and appointments would be
suspended.
Heart
attack patients calling 999 in parts of northern England were also asked to get
a lift instead of waiting for an ambulance as hospitals in the region
experienced more than double the growth rate in numbers of Covid patients
compared with London, which was previously worst hit by the Omicron variant
surge.
With
frontline worker absences fuelled by a record 218,000 new confirmed UK cases of
Covid on Tuesday, Prof Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical adviser, said the
NHS faced “very substantial pressure over the next couple of weeks” – though
there was not yet a “surge in mortality” seen with other waves by this stage.
Johnson
claimed the vaccine programme and reduced chance of hospitalisation with
Omicron meant there was now a chance for the country to get through the wave
without imposing new restrictions.
To reduce
disruption from staff off sick or isolating with Covid, he unveiled a plan for
100,000 critical workers to get tests on every working day to detect cases
quickly and prevent them spreading, although some experts raised concerns that
was not enough.
It was
reported last night that health officials were also looking at relaxing rules
around PCR tests. People who have asymptomatic infections will no longer need
to take a follow-up test after a positive lateral flow test, the Daily
Telegraph reported.
Previously,
Johnson has said he would bring in further restrictions if there was a risk of
the NHS becoming overwhelmed. However, the prime minister accepted it may
already be happening in some areas when asked for a definition of this, given
many medical staff feel that situation has already been reached.
“The NHS is
under huge pressure,” he told a Downing Street press conference. “I won’t
provide a definition of what being overwhelmed would constitute because I think
that different trusts and different places, at different moments, will feel at
least temporarily overwhelmed.
Johnson
said the country had a chance to “ride out this Omicron wave without shutting
down our country once again”. He said hospitals were “at the moment … sending
out signals saying that they are feeling the pressure hugely and there will be
a difficult period for our wonderful NHS for the next few weeks because of
Omicron … I just think we have to get through it as best as we possibly can.”
In a
further sign of the intense strain on hospitals, the Greater Manchester
Combined Authority said that the region’s 17 hospitals “have made the difficult
decision to pause some non-urgent surgery and appointments due to the rising
impact of Covid”. However, surgery for cancer, heart conditions, vascular
problems and organ transplantation will still go ahead, it pledged.
Medics and
scientists have been pressing Johnson for weeks to bring in restrictions beyond
the advice for people to work from home and requirement for masks in shops and
on public transport, with tougher measures already in force in Scotland and
Wales. But the prime minister would find it very difficult to get support for
further measures in England from Tory backbenchers, scores of whom voted
against current plan B restrictions before Christmas.
Johnson did
not rule out further measures to tackle Covid transmission but said the current
plan was to “keep our schools and our businesses open, and we can find a way to
live with this virus”.
Health
leaders reacted with concern, saying Johnson had not acknowledged the depths of
the NHS’s problems despite unprecedented pressure in some areas. Pat Cullen,
general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said nursing staff will have
“watched the prime minister’s statement in disbelief”. “One described to me today
that the NHS feels more broken than she’s ever known it. This is not hysteria,
this is blowing the whistle on falling standards as patient care comes under
real threat,” she said.
“Vaccinations
alone will not reduce infections and hospitalisations – more must be done to
prioritise nursing staff for access to testing and high-quality PPE. Meanwhile,
the emphasis on virtual and temporary beds shows that the government still
fails to recognise the value of highly skilled nursing staff or grasp the
extent of the workforce crisis.”
Matthew
Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said the attempt to reassure
the public that the NHS is not being overwhelmed “does not chime with the
experience of staff up and down the country who are facing fast-rising hospital
admissions, intense pressures on all parts of the health and care system and
widespread staff absence”.
“We urge
the government not to allow its optimism to lead to complacency given the
rapidly changing situation we are seeing on a daily basis,” added Taylor. He
welcomed the plan for daily rapid testing of key workers but said it should
have been made available earlier in the pandemic.
The British
Medical Association, which represents doctors, urged Johnson to impose new
restrictions to help relieve the pressure.
“The facts,
figures and the living reality for thousands of patients and NHS staff daily
demonstrate undoubtedly that the NHS is currently already overwhelmed,” said Dr
Chaand Nagpaul, the BMA’s chair of council. “Asking the NHS to ‘just get
through it’, without doing anything to help, would be to wrongly accept
avoidable suffering to thousands of patients in the coming weeks.”
Johnson was
flanked by Whitty and Prof Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK government’s chief
scientific adviser, as he outlined the approach for England. Vallance said
there were “extraordinarily high levels of infection at the moment” in the UK.
Hospital pressures would depend on how Omicron had an effect on the older
generation, he said.
Whitty
acknowledged that “some hospitals, some areas of the country” will come under
“very substantial pressure over the next couple of weeks” with high numbers of
staff isolating over infections compounding the typical winter pressures.
He also
spoke of being left “saddened” by the proportion of unvaccinated patients in
intensive care, as he urged people to get their boosters.
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