A row erupted over the Government’s Covid figures last night as it emerged almost one in three in hospital with the virus was admitted for unrelated reasons.
NHS statistics revealed the proportion of so-called ‘incidental’ coronavirus admissions had risen to a record 29 per cent – sparking claims that official figures were misleading.
These are cases of patients who have been admitted for unrelated reasons, like a fracture or fall, and then later find out they also have the disease.
It means thousands of those who are being counted as Covid admissions – which would suggest they are severely ill with the condition – are not actually suffering seriously with the virus.
Many only tested positive once they were on wards – and may have simply caught the virus while there.
It has raised concerns that the headline statistics – which drive Government decisions on restrictions and lockdowns – are overestimating how many people are dangerously sick with Covid.
A row erupted over the Government’s Covid figures as it emerged almost one in three in hospital with the virus was admitted for unrelated reasons. Pictured: Boris Johnson visited a Covid vaccination center in Milton Keynes Wednesday
Last night former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: ‘This is a nonsense. It’s almost certain that admissions for Covid are far lower than the figures suggest.
‘We cannot make decisions based on hospital admissions when we don’t know how many were admitted for other reasons and subsequently tested positive.’ He went on: ‘It also speaks very badly to the NHS’s ability to control Covid in hospitals when so many people are catching it there.’
He demanded that the Office for National Statistics publish data for Covid admissions.
Tory backbencher Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said: ‘We need to be much clearer about what the primary purpose was of someone being admitted to hospital.
‘If they’ve got Covid later it’s wrong to ascribe that to a Covid admission. We should be much more straightforward with the statistics.’ Because hospital inpatients are now routinely tested for Covid, admissions data in England have always included those who were brought in for entirely separate reasons but were later found to be infected, either because they had it already or caught it in hospital.
Since July, trusts have been instructed to give a breakdown of patients admitted for acute Covid symptoms as well as those in hospital for any other reason.
Many only tested positive once they were on wards – and may have simply caught the virus while there. Here’s a graphic showing 617.203 Covid hospitalisations up to December 21
Initially the figures showed that 20 per cent – one in five – of those in hospital with Covid were admitted for another condition. The proportion of those admitted for Covid has been steadily increasing, before hitting a number of highs over the past weeks.
It stood at 25 per cent – one in four – on December 12 before reaching 27 per cent five days later, then 28 per cent on the 19th. On December 21, the latest figure was 29%, which is published every week by NHS England. The rising number of cases will cause this percentage to rise in the future set.
According to the most recent data, out of 6,245 patients with Covid who were admitted, 4,432 of them were being treated for Covid.
Further analysis shows that just a fifth of the latest weekly rise in Covid inpatients was down to ‘true’ cases, with 45 sufferers admitted because of the virus while the other 214 arrived for other conditions.
On Wednesday, the Prime Minister visited a Covid vaccine centre in Milton Keynes at Rainbow Pharmacy on the Open University Campus.
The number of incidental admissions is likely to have risen still further since then because of the rapid spread of the milder Omicron variant, with cases covering the week to Christmas Eve to be published on New Year’s Eve.
Top hospital leaders have been discussing this growing trend in the recent past.
Chris Hopson, chief executive of membership body NHS Providers, wrote on Monday: ‘Talking to trust chief executives this morning, what’s very interesting is how many are talking about number of asymptomatic patients being admitted to hospital for other reasons and then testing positive for Covid. Some are describing this as “incidental Covid”.
‘As [the] Covid community infection rate rises rapidly due to Omicron, we will get more cases of this type of incidental Covid-19 in hospital.’
He pointed out that these cases will also cause problems because the patients will have to be isolated to avoid cross-infection, but added: ‘These cases are, obviously, not same as Covid driven serious respiratory illness.’