25pc of doctors ill or in isolation from Covid-19
Scale of pressures on NHS revealed
THE SCALE of the demands being placed on the NHS was laid bare yesterday as a leading health official revealed that up to a quarter of doctors are off work ill or in isolation to try to contain the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
The president of the Royal College of Physicians, Professor Andrew Goddard, confirmed that about 25 per cent of the doctor workforce is off, either with coronavirus or because a family member or housemate is ill.
Prof Goddard also revealed that hospital wards across England “are going from normal wards to Covid wards very quickly”.
He said: “At the moment, we think it’s more doctors self-isolating with family members, though there are some off sick themselves.
“This is really impacting a lot
in emergency departments and London is in a much worse position than elsewhere at the moment, but it will come to other places. Birmingham is also struggling.”
Asked about the pressure on intensive care units, Prof Goddard added: “Some hospitals are really at the limit. Within London it’s very, very difficult at the moment, you can’t underestimate how difficult it is.”
He said it was unclear whether the 25 per cent off work would be a “rolling number” or whether it could ease as testing of NHS staff increases and people come out of isolation.
“Of course the worry is we will lose more people to Covid-related illness,” he added.
It comes after the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said on Sunday that around one in five nurses had taken time off work to selfisolate.
Meanwhile, Professor Neil Ferguson, from Imperial College London and the author of a report which warned of mass deaths if the UK did not introduce strict controls, said there were signs the rate of hospital admissions was slowing.
Prof Ferguson said social distancing measures brought in by the Government appeared to be having an effect on the numbers.
“In the UK we can see some early signs of slowing in some indicators – less so deaths because
PREPARATIONS:
deaths are lagged by a long time from when measures come in force,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
Professor Andrew Goddard, president of the Royal College of Physicians.
“But if we look at the numbers of new hospital admissions, that does appear to be slowing down a bit now.
“It has not yet plateaued, so still the numbers can be increasing each day but the rate of that increase has slowed.”
Prof Ferguson said the epidemic was spreading at different rates in different parts of the country, but across the UK perhaps two per cent or three per cent of the population had been infected.
Based on the estimated UK population of 66 million, this would mean between 1.3 million and two million people have or have had the illness.
Public Health England (PHE) announced that almost 11,000 coronavirus tests a day can now be carried out, even though Care Minister Helen Whately suggested yesterday that just 7,000 tests were actually performed on Sunday.
PHE tweeted that “testing capacity for patient care” was 10,949 a day. The latest figure published yesterday for the daily number of Covid-19 tests conducted in the UK was 9,114, as of 9am on Saturday.
The Government had set a target of carrying out 10,000 tests a day by Sunday.
Mr Hancock and Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove both declared on Sunday morning that the 10,000 figure had been reached.
Some hospitals are really at the limit. Within London it’s very difficult.