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» Hundreds of New Year partygoers risk spreading killer virus » Fears for hospitals across UK as mutant strain sweeps north
HUNDREDS of revellers risked a deadly spread of Covid by partying on New Year’s Eve, as doctors warned wards will be swamped.
And hospitals in the North are facing a crisis as the raging mutant virus sweeps up from the South.
One exhausted medic warned: “We don’t know when this is going to stop.”
THE mutant Covid virus is rampaging across the country and threatening to cripple intensive care units as medical chiefs warn staff are already at “battle stations”.
London hospitals are expected to run out of critical care beds within days and doctors in the North fear the new variant – described as “hugely” more infectious – is heading their way. And there were fears a tougher lockdown may be needed.
Exhausted NHS staff face growing workloads while critically ill patients are being moved hundreds of miles to free up beds.
Blackburn with Darwen council’s director of Public Health, Professor Dominic Harrison, said it was “certain” the new Covid wave is sweeping north. He added: “As the first national lockdown was effectively lifted at an earlier stage in Lancashire than the rest of the UK, we exited with much higher infection rates. Those ‘ hotter embers’ reignited more quickly across the county and this meant that we had higher rates than the rest of the UK from August.”
One ICU consultant in the North told of his fears after seeing colleagues in London overwhelmed. He said: “I have grave concerns for the next three months in how stretched we will be in acute services in the NHS.”
And he called for the public to follow the rules in a bid to stop the virus spreading, after people held New Year’s Eve parties. The medic added: “Our concern is that sections of society seem to be wilfully ignoring the instructions.”
He told how his 22-bed ward was already under-staffed and over-stretched, operating with as few as 12 or 13 nurses when it usually requires 19. Royal College of Emergency Medicine vice president Dr Adrian Boyle said: “What is it going to be like over the next couple of months? I don’t know, I am m worried. We are very much at t battle stations. There is a real l worry about burn-out.”
Faculty of Intensive Care e Medicine dean Dr Alison n Pittard added: “Everyone has s seen what is happening in n London and the pressure that is s putting both on organisations s and on staff as well, and we fear r it is only a matter of time before it starts to spread to other parts of the country, and we are already starting to see that.
“It is really important that we try to stop the transmission in the community because that translates into hospital admissions.”
The capital’s hospitals are under intense pressure with two – UCL and the Royal London – issuing desperate pleas for more staff over the last 24 hours. Anthony Gordon, professor of critical care medicine at Imperial College London and an ICU consultant at St Mary’s Hospital, said: “Our concern is we don’t know when this is going to stop b because there are still more c cases coming in.
“It is about a week later before people get critically ill, so that number could still rise and we are very worried about that.”
Dr Megan Smith, from Guy’s a and St Thomas’ Hospital Trust i in the capital, said medics were f facing “horrifying” decisions as they have to choose which patients get lifesaving treatment. She added: “It’s not a position any of us ever want to be in, and we’re used to making difficult decisions as doctors, but deciding the outcome of, effectively, a competition for a ventilator, is just not what anyone signed up for.
“In terms of the emotional trauma for those individuals it’s horrifying. We shouldn’t be having to do it but we are.”
Oxford University’s Professor Jim Naismith warned tougher restrictions may be needed to combat the raging variant.
He said: “Unless we do something different
the new strain will continue to spread, more infections, more hospitalisations and more deaths.”
Figures yesterday showed a further 613 people died from Covid in the UK, while there were 53,285 more confirmed cases.
A boy of eight was among those who died. He had other health problems, the NHS said.
Scientists at Imperial College London warned the variant is way more infectious and could account for a 0.7 rise in the R-number in England, potentially leading cases to spread exponentially. Imperial’s Professor Axel Gandy said: “There is a huge difference in how easily the variant virus spreads.”
It looks to be spiking in the North West and Yorkshire, where it now accounts for roughly 50% of cases and rising rapidly. The variant accounts for 45% of all cases, Public Health England said, and more than 80% of cases in London and the East.
The UK’s latest R-number had been WORRIED Prof Naismith estimated at between 1.1 and 1.3.
There are fears Nightingale Hospitals, which the Government spent £220million setting up, would be useless because of staff shortages, not helped by a decade of Tory cuts. The Royal College of Nursing’s England director, Mike Adams, said workers’ leave was being cancelled to deal with the surge in demand of Covid cases.
He warned the public should not expect Nightingale Hospitals to provide extra capacity because there are not enough healthcare workers to staff them. Mr Adams said: “If we are having to cancel leave to staff these areas, the obvious question is where will the staff come from to open the Nightingales?
“I am sure there will be moves to open some beds, there are some beds open in different Nightingale hospitals in different areas of the country. I have real concerns that the expectation that this mass rollout in capacity can happen is misplaced because there aren’t the staff to do it.”
NHS England data showed that in the last week of December there were 743 more intensive care beds available than in the same week of 2019 – 4,394 compared with 3,651.
But in the same week there were 828 more patients in critical care – 3,340 compared with 2,512 a year ago – suggesting the surge in infections is greater than expected.