Hospital visits ‘not possible until next year’
Doctors warn that while coronavirus cases have fallen, NHS will not return to normality for months
PEOPLE will not be able to visit loved ones in hospital or attend routine outpatient clinics until “well into next year” despite falling numbers of coronavirus cases, senior doctors have warned.
The number of people admitted to hospital with Covid-19 has fallen significantly since January, with the impact of the lockdown and vaccination rollout now being translated into fewer patients admitted on to wards and intensive care units.
Latest Government figures show that the total number of patients in hospital suffering from Covid-19 has more than halved, going from 38,839 on Jan 19 to 15,485 on Feb 24.
The figures also show a significant drop in the number of Covid patients admitted to hospital on a daily basis, falling from the second wave peak of 4,576 on Jan 12 to 1,117 on Feb 22.
The number of patients on mechanical ventilation has almost halved, from a second wave peak of 4,076, on Jan 22, to 2,047 last Thursday. But the Royal College of Physicians has warned that this easing of pressure on the NHS will not see a return to normality for many months to come.
Prof Andrew Goddard, president of the RCP, told The Sunday Telegraph: “It will be a while before hospitals look like they did before the pandemic.
“Until we know if vaccination stops transmission of the virus and most of the population has been vaccinated, we will still have to restrict visitors and retain social distancing, doing as much as we can virtually, for at least the rest of the year and beyond.”
He added: “The days of simply walking into a busy hospital outpatient waiting room won’t be back for a long time.
Prof David Oliver, a consultant in South East England with 31 years experience, said “The overall number of people in hospital with Covid has fallen quite dramatically and wards that were converted to all Covid are now being repurposed to non-Covid. But there’s no way that outpatient numbers will return to the volumes of before for quite a while and we will need to continue with remote consultations. And general family visits will only be phased back in very gradually.”
The RCP says that although Covid admissions are falling and hospitals are no longer being overwhelmed as they were at the height of the UK’s second wave, they continue to feel the pressure of the pandemic. Figures for bed occupancy in England – including Covid and non-Covid patients – are currently as high as they were in December and January, at around 111,000. That is more than the 71,000 Covid and non-Covid beds occupied at the peak of the first wave, last April.
Between last April and December hospitals dealt with 18 million fewer outpatients than normal and around 2.7million fewer elective operations.
“We’re still in quite a bad place, but it feels much better than it did a month ago because the pandemic is waning and the impact of the vaccine is being felt among older groups,” said Prof Goddard. Consultants have warned that it will take many months to deal with the backlog of elective and planned surgery postponed as a result of the pandemic.
Adding to the problem of the sheer volume of patients on waiting lists for routine surgery, is the fact that many hospital staff have been left physically and emotionally drained.
Prof Oliver said: “There’s going to be a lot of catch-up needed in planned surgery work, but you’ve got a lot of staff who are exhausted.
“With many younger doctors especially pretty traumatised by what they’ve been through, getting Covid themselves or seeing colleagues die, and feeling betrayed by things like the lack of proper PPE.”