Overcrowded hospitals expose depth to British crisis unfolding

If the British government aimed to protect the health service during the coronavirus pandemic, the next few weeks are the biggest challenge.

After overtaking Italy as the country with the highest death toll in Europe, the UK is at the center of the continent struggling to contain Covid-19. Daily infections are on record – one in 50 people in England now have the disease – while Prime Minister Boris Johnson closed schools this week and ordered the population to stay at home.

Medical staff say they could be forced to dismiss people from hospitals if the latest exclusion could not be tackled quickly enough with a new virus strain that emerged in south-east England last month.

Winter is already stretching healthcare and the virus means more patients are showering in corridors and others need to be treated in parked ambulances. The British Medical Association, which represents doctors, said the national health service was facing a crisis as untreated infections were combined with illness and burnout of staff.

“There are so many thousands of patients coming in,” said Tom Dolphin, 42, an anesthetist at a London hospital. ‘The worrying thing is that we probably have not yet seen the peak of the patients who became infected over Christmas and the New Year. ”

During 10 months of unrest over his dealing with the pandemic, the British government managed to keep the country’s precious NHS going and then became the first Western country to start immunizing its citizens. It now runs the risk of becoming a hollow victory, as an accelerated vaccination program works against an out-of-control virus.

Medics has put Johnson under pressure to act nationwide amid the increase in cases. But even over the weekend, the government indicating that schools will remain open.

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New treatments mean that a greater proportion of Covid-19 patients are kept alive, but many have to stay in hospital due to breathing problems. It also puts pressure on capacity. The health system has already started about 40,000 nurses in the pandemic.

For nurse Stuart Tuckwood, the tighter closure brings at least some relief as the country awaits the vaccination desperately.

“People know how bad it’s going to be and how much worse it’s going to get if cases continue to increase as it is,” said Tuckwood, who works in a hospital in the south of England and is also a national union nurse. Unanimous. ‘We can not trust that the vaccine is the wonderful solution. There can be no complacency about the ability of the health service and staff to tackle. ”

According to Bloomberg, Britain’s death toll stood at 76,423 Coronavirus Tracker, after deaths over the past few days have been better than Italy. The number of daily cases on Tuesday rose to almost 61,000, the most since the coronavirus swept to Europe, though also after the UK took the test.

Johnson said in a televised speech on Monday that the number of Covid patients in hospitals in England was 40% higher than the first peak in April. The pressure on intensive care units was already severe during the holidays, with figures published in Health Service Journal shows that at the end of December they operated more than 110% of their capacity in London and the south east of England. Some patients had to be hours away to the south west or north of England.

The dramatic escalation prompted Johnson to gambling on multiple fronts. In addition to re-locking the country, the government is trying rapidly increases the number of people receiving their first dose of vaccine by pushing back their second shots.

It aims to expand supplies of the two vaccines being rolled out: one from Pfizer Inc. and partner BioNTech SE and the others of AstraZeneca Plc and the University of Oxford. The move has garnered support from some health experts, but is causing concern among others. including Pfizer.

The goal is to maximize the number of vulnerable people who will receive at least protection in the shortest amount of time. British health authorities have pointed to data showing that the vaccines provide substantial defense after a single dose, with the second shot important in the longer term.

Johnson said Tuesday that 1.3 million people are nearly the most vaccinated, or nearly 2% of the population. According to Bloomberg, Germany vaccinated 317,000 people on January 5 and France only 2,000 Nothing Tracker. The London government has set a target of vaccinating nearly 14 million people by mid-February.

The reality, however, is that Britain has little choice. New infections in the UK – 720 per 100,000 population over 14 days – were more than according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control twice as much as Italy or France at the end of December.

According to the NHS Providers group, there are almost 9,000 more coronavirus patients in hospital beds than on Christmas Day – which is equivalent to almost 18 hospitals.

Tensions on doctors and nurses are rising, and “this is creating a need for a new way of thinking,” said Doug Brown, chief executive of the British Society for Immunology. “The risk of not doing so is much greater.” In a normal world, the country will stick to the dosage tested in the clinical trials, he said. “We are not in a normal world right now.”

Protecting the NHS resonate in Britain. During the first closure in the spring, people stood in front of their door and health workers cheered every Thursday night and children painted rainbows to stick to the front windows. The government is relying on a weary nation to act again, with the NHS now the key to exporting the vaccines.

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It is no easy task to find and deploy enough staff to perform about 2 million vaccinations per week, and this will have a huge impact on the health service. Richard Sloggett, a former special adviser to Matt Hancock, health secretary.

“It definitely feels like we’re moving to a point where we’re betting the house on a vaccine program,” said Sloggett, a senior fellow at the Policy Exchange Brainstorm.

The hope is that the exclusion will work before hospitals can not cope, says Dolphin, the anesthetist, who is also a member of the BMA’s board. The restrictions will apply in England until at least mid-February, although Johnson indicated at a press conference on Tuesday that there are still many months of restrictions ahead.

“It’s to the point that the service is not what we would normally consider suitable for the UK,” Dolphin said. “Or really suitable for any country.”

– With the help of Suzy Waite, Neil Callanan and Eric Pfanner