GPs in England are to begin the mass roll-out of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine as hospitals across the UK face rising numbers of seriously ill patients.
The vaccines are being delivered to sites across the country as the government commits to offering a vaccine to more than 13 million people in the top four priority groups by mid-February.
It comes as NHS trusts in London are on the verge of being overwhelmed, according to leaked health service documents, while other trusts are rapidly turning normal wards into intensive care units (ICUs).
As of January 4th, there were 30,451 people in UK hospitals with coronavirus, much higher than the April 12th peak of 21,684.
Rupert Pearse, professor of intensive care medicine and a consultant at the Royal London, said his own ICU staff were having to care for far more sick patients as he urged the public to heed the ‘stay at home’ lockdown message.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme there would usually be one fully-trained ICU nurse to one ICU patient but staff were becoming increasingly stretched.
“Right now we are diluting down to one (ICU) nurse to three (patients) and filling those gaps with untrained staff and in some instances doctors helping nurses deliver their care… and we’re even facing diluting that further to one in four,” he said.
“As intensive care doctors, we’re not sure how we can together deliver the quality of care that we need to.”
We’re really struggling to provide the quality of patient care that we think patients deserve
Speaking on behalf of the Intensive Care Society, he said the problems were not just in London, but in other hospitals across the UK, and were not limited to ICU wards.
He added: “We are really very concerned now about the seriousness of the situation… which is definitely worse than the first wave and proving much harder to deal with now as the resources we had in the first wave aren’t available to us.
“So we’re really struggling to provide the quality of patient care that we think patients deserve. And the impact of the pandemic is taking care away from other illnesses such as cancer and heart disease.
“In essence, the healthcare available to all of us is not as good as it should be right now.”
Prof Pearse said that unless people take the lockdown seriously the impact on healthcare across the country “could be catastrophic”.
Stark predictions
According to a Zoom presentation seen by the Health Service Journal (HSJ), hospital capacity in London will not be enough for the expected rise in patients in the coming weeks.
NHS England London’s region medical director Vin Diwakar set out stark predictions to the medical directors of the capital’s hospital trusts on a call, the HSJ reported.
The data showed even if the number of Covid patients grows at the lowest rate considered likely, and measures to manage demand and increase capacity, including opening the capital’s Nightingale hospital, are successful, the NHS in London will be short of nearly 2,000 general and acute (G&A) and intensive care beds by January 19th.
Meanwhile, the chief executive of NHS Providers, Chris Hopson, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that hospital bosses across England are looking to the care and nursing home sector for any spare capacity.
“This is escalating really quickly,” he said. “We’ve seen 5,000 new patients in hospital beds with Covid-19 over the past week – that’s 10 full hospitals’ worth of Covid patients in hospitals in just seven days, so it’s a really big challenge.”
He said the Exeter and Manchester Nightingale hospitals are currently being used but Nightingales are the “last-resort insurance policy” as they are not “purpose built for health and care” and require the diversion of staff.
Elsewhere, Dr Richard Cree, from the South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, urged people to follow the rules, writing on his blog: “I have spent a torrid few days desperately trying to keep people alive and failing.”
