A spokesman for the National Health Service (NHS) told CNN on Saturday that those responsible for the field hospitals, which were quickly set up during the first wave of the pandemic but have since been largely moths, were asked for services ready on December 23. to get to use. “
The NHS has come under intense pressure in recent weeks as the new variant of the virus has taken hold, particularly in south-east England – including London, Kent and Essex – and parts of Wales.
On Friday, the UK reported 53,285 newly confirmed Covid-19 cases and 613 new deaths. It reported 55,892 new cases on Thursday, the highest daily number in the country since the pandemic began.
According to the government’s latest healthcare data as of January 1, there are currently 22,534 coronavirus patients in hospitals in England, of which 1,940 patients with confirmed Covid-19 infections require mechanical ventilation beds.
Doctors have made a serious appeal to the public to stay at home and follow government guidelines on social distance as hospitals and other healthcare services come under tremendous pressure.
In another message posted Thursday, Pearse said: “Media reports about the pressure on the NHS are all true. The situation in London is now MUCH worse than the first wave, and still deteriorating. Sad to see long queues of ambulances outside the to see the hospital where I work. ‘
‘Record numbers’ of Covid patients
London Mayor Sadiq Khan told CNN that hospitals in the capital were dealing with ‘record numbers’ of Covid-19 patients in addition to normal, non-Covid winter congestion on demand.
“We now have more Covid patients in hospitals in London than ever before during this pandemic and the NHS in London, hospitals in London and our fantastic health workers in London have been stretched,” Khan said on Thursday.
Khan said he was “concerned” about hospitals being overwhelmed, but added that the NHS has the flexibility to increase capacity, for example by canceling certain routine selection operations.
‘But the biggest concern we do have is that if we continue to see an increase in the spread of viruses, it is possible that hospitals do not have the capacity to cope, and that is of particular concern because we have not yet reached the normal January, not -Covid peak, ‘he said.
Asked if the military could step in to help new patients, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told Times Radio on Thursday: “Of course we are ready to help with Nightingales if the critical pressure exceeds the capacity of the. existing NHS. “
He said the army currently had about 5,000 staff members in the Covid-19 response.
Most of England is now under the strictest restrictions to try to limit the spread of the virus.
In the midst of the deteriorating situation, ministers were forced to reverse a decision next week to reopen some primary schools in London after coming under pressure from local authorities and unions. All schools in London will now switch to distance education from Monday, when the new term begins, with only vulnerable and critical working children allowed to attend in person.
The rate change came just two days after the UK Department of Education said nine boroughs in London and the city of London would keep primary schools open, while those in 23 other districts would remain closed. Khan tweeted on Friday that the government “finally made sense and made a turn” over its plan to open schools in some areas.
Vaccine implantation plan
The new strategy, announced on Wednesday by the head of the British medicine regulator MHRA, means that the interval between doses can be extended to 12 weeks, instead of the three weeks previously determined.
The Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine has been in use in the UK since early December, when the country became the first in the world to approve it, but supplies are limited. Pfizer said it has no data to show that just a single dose of the vaccine will provide protection against the disease after more than 21 days.
UK regulators have also advised giving the second dose of the newly approved Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine four to 12 weeks later.
According to British Health Secretary Matt Hancock, more than half a million doses of Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine will be available as of Monday, with millions more in the coming weeks. The vaccine is cheaper and easier to distribute than the Pfizer / BioNTech jab, as it can be kept at normal refrigerator temperatures for at least six months.
But even if the government achieves its goal of vaccinating millions of elderly and clinically vulnerable people quickly, reducing Covid-related hospital admissions, the UK faces another difficult week.
‘It’s a pretty gloomy and depressing picture right now’ in England, Deputy Chief of Staff Jonathan Van Tam said at a press conference in Downing Street on Wednesday. “It is almost certain that the NHS has not yet seen the impact of the infections that took place during the mixing at Christmas and which are unfortunately quite disillusioning.”
New variant is more common under the age of 20
As of January 1, at least thirty countries, including the United States, have reported cases of the more contagious variant of the coronavirus first detected in the United Kingdom.
A study written by a collaborative team of Imperial College London, University of Edinburgh, England for public health and others confirmed that the variant was more transmissible and that it was more common in people under 20 years of age. .
While the study, which was released on Thursday, found that people under the age of 20 make up a larger proportion of cases of the new variant of the virus, the authors said it was still too early to determine the reasons for this, and added that further research is underway.
According to health officials, there is no evidence that the variant is more deadly or causes worse diseases.
In response to the study, Jim Naismith, a professor of structural biology at the University of Oxford, told the Science Media Center in the UK that it was “not really possible to judge how serious this new strain is” in terms of reducing the rate of infection.
“Unless we do something else, the new virus strain will continue to spread, more infections, more hospitalizations and more deaths,” he said. “The NHS is under severe tension and it will get worse without change. January and early February will be difficult. If we can not reduce the spread of the new strain, we will probably overwhelm the NHS, the consequences would be dire . ‘
CNN’s Hira Humayun contributed to this report.