At least half a dozen NHS trusts across England have declared ‘critical incidents’ amid a staff absence crisis and rising Covid hospital admissions caused by the rapid spread of the Omicron variant.
Morecambe Bay and United Lincolnshire Hospitals are among the trusts that have signalled they may be unable to deliver vital care to patients in the coming weeks because so many staff are off isolating.
Declaring an incident enables hospitals to get help from other NHS trusts and hospitals and means services can be reprioritised at speed, for example to focus on emergency care.
One in 10 NHS staff nationally are currently isolating with Covid and there are even higher absence rates at individual hospitals — despite the quarantine period being cut from 10 to seven days.
Daily Covid cases have hovered above 100,000 for nearly two weeks straight amid fears the staffing crisis will only get worse and there are growing calls for England to follow the US and France and cut self-isolation to five days.
Matthew Taylor, the chief executive officer of the NHS Confederation claimed that there had been a “politicized attempt” to minimize the pressures the NHS is under.
Times Radio spoke to Mr Taylor who was Sir Tony Blair’s chief advisor during his tenure as Prime Minister. He said: “We have to recognize that over the next few weeks… Things are going to very, very difficult.”
Boris Johnson said yesterday that he would not impose additional restrictions “for now”, but acknowledged that the NHS is under significant strain.
Coronavirus hospitalisations increased by 22% in the last fortnight, to 1,915 admissions per day. However, it is becoming more common that they will continue to decline from their previous highs.
People are now being released faster from Covid-related illnesses, as there has been an increase in positive tests after being admitted.
NHS leaders expressed their optimism that Omicron epicenter London hospitals may have begun to plateau after three weeks.
Backbench Tory MPs denounce calls for greater Covid restrictions in order to save the NHS from a crisis of staffing.
Morecambe Bay Hospital (left), and United Lincolnshire Hospitalss (right) have both indicated they could not provide critical care to their patients in coming weeks as a result of staffing shortages caused by Omicron.
This graph illustrates the percentage of Covid patients who needed ventilators during Delta’s dominance (November), and when Omicron gained control (late December). The graph also shows that this proportion has decreased by half. This is another indicator of the milder nature of the disease.
Sky News was told by Chris Hopson of NHS Providers chief executive, that around half a dozen hospitals in the UK have had to declare critical incidents over the last five-days.
He stated that it was a planned, sensible thing to do in order to make sure that trust continues to deliver the essential and critical services.
Hopson, however, stressed that although there is a shortage of staff within the NHS they are not universal.
While there was some suggestion that as much as 25% of staff might be affected by coronavirus, Hopson says this is not the truth.
Over the weekend, hospitals in Lincolnshire declared an emergency staffing situation. Ministers were prompted to prepare plans for recruiting 20,000 reservists as a way to ease winter pressures.
United Lincolnshire Hospital bosses warned that there were too many nurses and doctors absent that patients’ care would be compromised, particularly for heart and stroke patients.
The trust declared Sunday’s incident a “critical event”, meaning that hospital leaders are asking for support from other trusts in order to manage the situation.
According to latest NHS workforce data, the trust which oversees four hospitals in the county saw 7.5% of 8,500 workers off sick on Boxing Day. This was compared with 68,000 nationwide.
Morecambe Bay NHS Trust (Lancashire) also announced the incident on Monday evening, amid rising Covid hospital admissions. Also, staff were testing positive for coronavirus.
Today’s BBC Radio 4 interview with Dr Sakthi Karaunanithi, Lancashire County Council’s public health director, revealed that the county was at the ‘foothills’ Omicron wave.
“Lancashire will soon experience the same thing as London at the start of the month, and London has better resources and infrastructures than other regions. So we should be prepared for an Omicron tsunami in Lancashire.
‘We are clearly seeing a shift from 20s and 30s and 40-year-olds being affected by Omicron to a clear shift to a more 60-plus age group being affected, and that is what is causing us concern as well as the immediate concern being absence, staff absence, both in the NHS and education – schools are just going to re-open this week.
“But, this does not mean that we can’t concentrate on nonCovid issues. That’s also really needing being addressed immediately. So it’s not just fighting Covid; we must face all of the non-Covid needs and demand.
Scientists, politicians and business leaders are calling for the self-isolation time to be reduced to just five days in order to avoid vital services being shut down.
But Matthew Taylor at the NHS Confederation said the NHS did not want staff going back into hospitals with Covid and risk passing it on.
Times Radio told him that it should be reduced to five days self-isolation if scientists’say it is absolutely safe.
He spoke out about his outlook and said that there should be some optimism and hope for the medium-term. We hope, as the Prime Minister said, that once Omicron passes through us, we can live with Covid and that the NHS will rebound.
“On the other side, we have to recognize where we are right now. We’ve got the next few days to at least acknowledge that.” [going to be]Very, very hard.
“I believe that the one thing people in our service find hard is that there seems to be a sort of almost political attempt to suggest that they’re not as difficult as it really is. That any suggestion that we should continue with restrictions, or whether that’s individual responsibility or policy, would seem like it.
‘And if you’re working in health service, you see the reality, and what you want politicians, what you want people, to be driven by is the data and what’s happening at the front line, and let’s not be in the business of … getting away from the reality of this.’
According to him, the decision on restrictions should be made based on data and in the national interest. Let us continue to be driven by data.
The data wouldn’t become more clear until either the end or start of next weeks, he said.
Taylor acknowledged that hospital admissions have not risen across Britain, although they may seem to be at a plateau in London.
He said that Covid was the most pressing issue of them all.
According to him, even without Covid the NHS was still short 100,000 workers, “so we are in long-term trouble with workforce planning and resource allocation.”
He added: ‘The problem with staff absence is that it is unpredictable and lumpy in the sense that you don’t know where somebody is going to get sick and, when somebody does get sick, it’s then more likely that other people in that team will get sick and hospitals and healthcare systems are complex, they’re inter-dependent, so … if you lose paramedics then the ambulance can’t go out, and if ambulances can’t go out then that means there’s more pressure on other services.
“So those interdependencies, and the unpredictable nature of staff absence mean that NHS leaders have to work round the clock thinking about the best way to deploy resources to meet the most pressing and urgent needs.
“Even with all of their creativity and imagination, it’s becoming nearly impossible to do so, which is why hospitals declare critical incidents.”