SORRY, NO BEDS LEFT
■ PATIENTS BEING WHEELED BACK TO AMBULANCES ■ A RECORD 4.5M ARE ON HOSPITALS WAITING LIST NOW
EMERGENCY patients are being taken back out of hospitals and treated in ambulances because there are too few beds as the NHS reaches a ‘calamitous’ stage, medics warn.
As wards overflow with a record number of Covid-19 cases – and with the waiting list for routine ops at an all-time high of 4.5million – ‘significant patient harm’ is being caused to other seriously ill people too.
One doctor revealed: ‘I saw a patient in an ambulance with very low oxygen levels, liquid building up in their lungs. They were essentially drowning.
‘I had to walk them out of the ambulance, they had their X-ray in the hospital and because there was no space we had to stretcher them back to the ambulance, even though they were in heart
failure.’ The London doctor, who asked not to be named, told the PA news agency: ‘You have to do your best but it’s not what I signed up to.’
The Royal College of Surgeons called the situation ‘calamitous’ with 2 per cent of A&E admissions waiting more than four hours for a bed, and a 100-fold increase in patients waiting a year or longer for surgery.
Prime minister Boris Johnson has admitted there was a ‘very substantial risk’ of the NHS being overwhelmed – but doctors say it already is.
London A&E doctor Emeka Okorochia said: ‘There are no beds and no space. We’re assessing them outside, in the ambulances, in the corridors and it’s not what the A&Es are designed for. The NHS is overwhelmed, not managing.’
A record 33, 88 coronavirus patients were in hospital on January 8 – according to the latest figures.
And a University College London study found coronavirus patients were 20 per cent more likely to die in the busiest intensive care units. The strain on NHS staff has also had an impact with more than 100,000 off work – half self-isolating or with Covid-19, and others with depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress.
Epidemiologist Prof Neil Ferguson said the rise could be starting to slow after new cases fell from 81,000 on December 29 to 48,682 yesterday.
‘It looks like in London and a couple of other regions in the south east and east of England, hospital admissions may even have plateaued,’ he said.
‘This is not seen everywhere, but overall at a national level we are seeing the rate of growth slow.’
The number of people waiting for routine NHS hospital treatment is now a record 4. million. And 192,000 of them have been waiting longer than 12 months – up from 1,398 a year ago.
In Birmingham, liver transplants were halted for two weeks and Cwm Taf health board in south Wales said it had cancelled some cancer surgery.
NHS medical director Prof Stephen Powis said: ‘Non-Covid services will be under additional pressure until and unless this virus is under control.’