Hospitals braced as Covid surge hits south Scotland
●Bed shortage warning as rural south becomes latest infection hot spot ●Johnson warns of rising danger as one in 50 now have virus in England
Coronavirus hospital admissions in Scotland have jumped by 30 per cent in a fortnight, with one health board just 12 Covid-19 patients away from breaching capacity.
In total, Covid-19 hospitalisations in Scotland have jumped by more than 300 since the announcement of the Boxing Day lockdown, Scottish Government figures show.
The total number of patients in hospital in S cotland with Covid-19 has risen from 1,032 on December 18 to 1,347 as of January 5, with that number expected to continue to rise as Covid-19 spreads across the country.
Hospital capacit y for Covid-19 is 3,656 beds across S cotland, meaning a third of beds are already taken up with Covid-19 patients.
But some areas are close to breaching capacity, with NHS Ayrshire and Arran - which covers East, North and South Ayrshire and covers health secretary Jeane Freeman’s constituency - just 12 patients away from breaching its capacity of 203 beds and 192 currently in hospital battling the virus.
New figures last night
suggested one in 50 people in England had Covid-19 last week, and the number of daily confirmed coronavirus cases in the UK has topped 60,000 for the first time. At one hospital in Lincolnshire, a "critical" incident has been declared after a sharp rise in patients requiring admission.
And north of the Border southern Scotland and areas around Glasgow are at the centre of the new rise in transmission.
Cases in Scotland have been above 2,000 a day since 29 December, excluding data from 4 January when 1,905 people tested positive.
They have been above 2,500 on three occasions, including yesterday's figure of 2,529, more than double the number of cases reported on Boxing Day – the first day of the level four lockdown.
Inverclyde, which is in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board,i sex peri encing the highest rates of Covid-19 in the country. The board has recorded 578.4 cases per 100,000 people in the latest figures covering specimens of Covid-19 tests from between 27 December and 2 January.
During the same time period, Dumfries and Galloway (536.1 cases per 100,000) and the Scottish Borders (432 per 100,000) have also seen cases shoot up.
Renfrewshire and North Lanarkshire (414.9 and 402.2 cases per 100,000 respectively) are also showing signs of exponential growth of Covid-19 similar to what has already occurred in London and south-east England.
At the Scottish Government’s daily coronavirus briefing yesterday, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: “These are areas we moved down into level one not long before the end of the year because case incidence was so low.
"But the virus has this new strain, has got in there, that will undoubtedly be to some extent travel-related, with people who'll have brought it either returning from elsewhere in the UK or coming from elsewhere in the UK, but it is spreading very quickly.
"And therefore now Borders is one of the three or four health boards that gives us the greatest immediate concern about hospital capacity and that makes it all the more important that people in the Borders, Dumfries and Galloway, right across the country, understand the severity of this and understand why we are saying to people 'stay at home'.”
Hospital admissions are known as“lag indicators ”, meaning their numbers will rise well after the initial infection and are more likely to be connected with infections from around a fortnight beforehand.
The 30 per cent jump in a fort night shows accelerated community spread of the new variant of Covid-19 was likely already well under way before the announcement of stricter measures for Christmas and from Boxing Day on 19 December.
The total number of Scotland’s Covid-19 hospital patients is just 173 below April’s peak of 1,520. Other areas such as Dumfries and Galloway are also feeling the strain of Covid-19, with hospitalisations having quadrupled from five to 20 between December 18 and January 5. However, their capacity of 70 beds is not yet under threat. Several regions have seen increases, with NHS Grampian seeing a similar rise to Ayrshire and Arran of 51 per cent (from 51 patients to 77), NHS Lanarkshire a rise of 35 per cent (from 167 to 225), and NHS Tayside seeing a rise of 32 per cent (from 74 to 98).
Scottish Labour’ s health spokesperson Monica Lennon said it was time for the Scottish Government to “urgently support” NHS Ayrshire and Arran and labelled the situation “desperate”.
She said: “The situation in NHS Ayrshire and Arran is desperate. Questions must be asked when the Health Secretary’s own local health board is at breaking point.
"The Scottish Government must ur gently support NHS Ayrshire and Arran, especially the staff who are exhausted. Support should have been provided long before now.
“With cases rising across Scotland, SNP ministers must rapidly increase resources to support frontline NHS staff and safe patient care.”
Scottish Conservatives health spokesperson Donald Cameron said the statistics showed the “gruelling pressure” faced by the NHS due to Covid-19.
He said: “It is vital the SNP government ensures enough hospital beds are made available for Covid sufferers as cases rise – we can’t have any excuses or failures.
“The burden on our hospitals will become less as more people are vaccinated and key to this is a detailed vaccination plan with a clear strategy. It should outline daily and weekly targets and allow progress to be monitored.
“The SNP Government has failed to produce this required plan yet, despite being asked on numerous occasions, but need to without delay for all our sakes.”