Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser
A&E figures plummet during corona crisis
The number of patients attending the accident and emergency department at Monklands Hospital has more than halved during the coronavirus lockdown.
NHS figures show that there were 587 attendances at the Airdrie hospital’s casualty department in the week ending April 5 – compared to its normal sevenday figure of around 1300.
A similar plummeting trend has been seen at all of NHS Lanarkshire’s acute hospitals and across Scotland as a whole in the month since the first announcement of social distancing, followed a week later by the government lockdown announcement.
Monklands Hospital saw 1344 patients – nearly 200 per day – at its emergency department in the week ending March 8, the period in which the first coronavirus case was reported in Scotland.
Numbers dropped to 1186 over the following seven days, and the first official introduction of social distancing then saw the figures reduce to 786 in the week ending March 22. The first two weeks of lockdown resulted in 598 and 587 attendances respectively – the latter being 45 per cent of the numbers seen at the Airdrie hospital in the same week 12 months earlier.
Monklands’ previous lowest casualty attendance figure on the NHS Performs website, which gives statistics back to the start of 2019, was 1210 for the week of last Christmas; and before the coronavirus lockdown, patient numbers there had only dropped below 1300 eight times since January 2019.
Its busiest single week of that 15-month period came last August when there were 1504 patients in seven days – during a sustained period of exceptionally high summer attendances across the county which prompted NHS Lanarkshire to issue a plea to use community services such as pharmacies and NHS 24 for minor ailments.
The same trend of reducing patient numbers has been seen across Lanarkshire and Scotland, with Wishaw General reducing from 1261 A&E patients at March 15 to 631 four weeks later and Hairmyres in East Kilbride going from 1013 to 494 in the same period.
NHS Lanarkshire’s combined total of 1712 emergency attendances in the week ending April 5 was 44 per cent of the number presenting at its three acute hospitals in the corresponding week of the previous year and compares to the area’s regular figure of around 4000 emergency department patients.
Dr John Keaney, the health board’s acute medical director, said: “We have seen a significant reduction in the number of people attending our A&E departments.
“We would like to thank people for heeding the government advice by staying at home and protecting the NHS
– however, it is important that people realise that the NHS is still open.
“People should not ignore the early warning signs of serious conditions; if you are unwell with non-coronavirus symptoms, it’s important to continue to seek medical help by contacting your GP.
“If symptoms worsen out of hours, call 111, and in an emergency, dial 999.”
Health secretary Jeane Freeman emphasised: “While members of the public are continuing to listen to advice and only going to A&E if illnesses are immediate or life-threatening, I would like to remind people not to ignore early warning signs of serious conditions.
“If you have new symptoms then it’s vital you get this checked out either by contacting your GP, or if symptoms are urgent by attending A&E.
“We are working closely with health boards and partnerships to ensure robust plans are in place to strengthen capacity and minimise the impact of Covid-19 across the health system.”