Operations face axe if hospital cases surge
NHS chief says something will have to give if rise in admissions is accompanied by significant staff absences
NHS trusts are likely to start cancelling operations next week if there are significant increases in Covid hospitalisations, hospital chiefs say.
Ministers have been presented with modelling suggesting that hospital admissions are doubling every 16 days, with some suggestions they could peak in the middle of the month.
Latest figures show 2,370 Covid admissions a day in England – meaning a further doubling could exceed the peak reached last January, when there were 4,134 daily admissions.
The latest statistics for England show hospital treatments doubling in just seven days. But data over the Christmas period are less reliable and the rate of increase has slowed in recent days.
Meanwhile, the number of patients on ventilators has remained stable since the advent of the new variant, and is lower than it was in early November, reflecting the fact that omicron is less likely than delta to cause severe disease.
Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents hospitals, said that there was “significant uncertainty” ahead, with some evidence that infections may already have peaked in the capital.
But he said that if the rate of increase in cases returns to those seen a few days ago, hospitals would need to start cancelling operations, as well as attempting to open thousands more beds.
Government sources also said the situation remains uncertain, with Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, yesterday saying any new restrictions would be a “last resort”.
Last week Mr Hopson said the threshold for the Government to introduce extra restrictions had yet to be crossed, saying there was so far no surge of severely ill older people.
Yesterday the NHS chief said he anticipated several days of uncertainty, before the impact of Christmas mixing on hospitalisations could be seen.
If the rate of rise in hospital cases increases next week, they are likely to have to start standing up extra “surge capacity” within days, which is likely to force operations to be cancelled.
“If the Covid caseload does rise, and it is accompanied by significant staff absences then something will have to give and lower priority elective surgery would be the conventional way forward,” he said.
On New Year’s Eve, 49,921 NHS staff were off work or isolating because of Covid, according to figures seen by The Sunday Times. This is more than double the most recent figure published by the NHS, which showed there were 24,632
Covid-related absences in acute NHS trusts on Boxing day.
Mr Hopson stressed that trusts would attempt to protect urgent and high priority operations, given the record numbers on waiting lists, with many cases now in pressing need of treatment.
He said it was particularly hard to predict the trajectory for London, saying it was possible that hospitalisations could plateau then drop – or could increase rapidly as the result of intergenerational mixing at Christmas.
NHS trusts have been told to recruit retired medics and volunteers to help staff up to 4,000 extra beds at “Nightingale surge hubs”.
More than a dozen hospitals have banned most visitors, in an attempt to limit the spread of the virus, with NHS leaders yesterday saying managers had been forced to make “difficult choices”.
Prof Stephen Powis, NHS national medical director, has said the NHS is on a “war footing”. He said: “We hoped never to have to use the original Nightingales and I hope we never to have to use these new hubs.”
Separately, the Government has warned business and public sector leaders of a worst-case scenario in which one in four staff is off work. Absences for train staff remain in the single digits, although cancellations were on average running at one in 20 this week. Should a quarter of staff be absent, it is thought some transport services could be cut to 60 per cent of their normal levels.