‘NO MORE HEADROOM TO DEAL WITH COVID’
HOSPITALS have virtually no “headroom” to deal with another significant rise in Covid admissions. Professor Kelechi Nnoaham, director of public health at Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board, said NHS bed occupancy is at its very limits.
HOSPITALS in a large swathe of South Wales have virtually no “headroom” to deal with another significant rise in Covid admissions, a public health expert has warned.
Professor Kelechi Nnoaham, director of public health at Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board, said contending with the dual issue of coronavirus and routine care means NHS bed occupancy is at its very limits.
On July 11, the health board – which covers the Rhondda Cynon Taf, Bridgend and Merthyr Tydfil council areas – issued a statement explaining that its services were experiencing “really high levels of demand” which was caused, in part, by an increase in Covid cases.
Extra efforts are now being made to vaccinate as many people as possible in the region, particularly in areas where uptake has been lower.
“In the second wave, whenever there was a rise in community cases we became quite used to seeing hospital admissions increase within 10 days to two weeks, and then we’d see ICU cases within five to 10 days following that,” Prof Nnoaham explained.
“That pattern has now been broken due to the successful vaccination programme – and we are now in uncharted territory.
“We are currently seeing an increase of cases in the community, but that link between community cases and hospital cases has certainly been weakened because we haven’t been seeing a rise in hospital cases for some time.
“But in more recent days we are beginning to see hospital cases begin to trickle in.
“The headroom that we had during the second wave does not exist any longer because we are now trying to bring back as many services as possible to respond to the need for elective cases that have built up in the community.
“We no longer have a lot of tolerance for an increase in hospitalisations.”
Latest NHS Wales figures show that there are 24 confirmed, suspected and recovering coronavirus patients in general and acute beds at Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board (UHB) hospitals and none in intensive care. To put this into context there were as many as 600 coronavirus patients in the health board’s general and acute beds in January 2021.
But there are currently 1,228 nonCovid patients in general and acute beds across Cwm Taf – about double the figure seen in January.
The number of vacant beds is now, in fact, lower than six months ago during the peak of the second wave.
Prof Nnoaham admitted there was a chance routine and elective surgery could be postponed again across the health board and beyond should Covid hospital admissions start to soar.
“At this point I would only describe it as ‘a risk’ because at the moment there is no desire to halt it any more. By postponing it again it will only lead to it building up again,” he said.
As more people are vaccinated against Covid-19, Prof Nnoaham said it was inevitable that more people who are single or doublejabbed will end up in hospital.
However, he stressed that the proportion of those unvaccinated winding up in hospital – and becoming dangerously unwell – was going to be far, far higher.
“An increasing proportion will be in the vaccinated cohort, but it does not mean that your likelihood of ending up in hospital is higher.
“If anything it’s completely the other way around,” he added.
“People who are resisting vaccination seize upon that argument, but it is patently wrong.
“While I cannot give you the local picture when it comes to demographic as the numbers are so small, I have no doubt that if you came back to me in two weeks’ time most of the people in hospital will have been vaccinated.
“Even pre-Covid, no vaccination has ever been 100% efficacious, and that’s why you will still see some fully double-jabbed people in hospital.
“But the more people we vaccinate the closer we get to herd immunity becoming a reality where the herd protects the more vulnerable.”
Prof Nnoaham said staff across Cwm Taf Morgannwg UHB are “absolutely shattered” from the pandemic and praised their resilience. “It has been an almost relentless 16 months.
“People are tired and we must continue to think about how we look after our staff.”
Over the weekend the health board created pop-up, walk-in vaccine clinics in Merthyr Tydfil to target areas where vaccine uptake was below average.
“We have been able to identify areas where there’s a combination of high incidence rates and a lower uptake, and that’s allowed us to do more pro-active vaccinations,” he said.
“This is not a mandatory vaccine. It’s still up to people to come forward and be vaccinated.
“So all we can do is to provide information, address what we consider to be misinformation in the hope that people will make the sensible choice.”
He added that young people, who are less likely to have acute Covid or need hospitalisation, should still be worried about the harms of the virus.
“You may be younger physiologically and be resilient enough to not end up in hospital, however long Covid is a reality and there are more and more people living with the consequences of long Covid.
“Please protect yourself when you have the opportunity.”
The seven-day coronavirus infection rate across Cwm Taf Morgannwg UHB is on the rise, with latest figures from Public Health Wales showing that Bridgend has 268.6 cases per 100,000 population, Rhondda Cynon Taf 168.7 and Merthyr Tydfil 121.0.