Health board warns it will have to declare ‘major incident’ within days

A SCOTTISH health board has warned it could declare a ‘major incident’ next week amid a surge in Covid cases.

NHS Grampian is poised to reduce services and redeploy staff for a 30-day period in order to cope with an ‘exponential growth’ of Omicron cases.

The development was revealed by NHS chiefs yesterday. Members of the military have already been drafted in to NHS Grampian and other areas.

But in a briefing to staff, NHS Grampian said that due to ‘an exponential growth’ of cases in the last fortnight, it could declare a ‘major incident’ as early as next week. It said: ‘Based on our modelling data, we anticipate a continued and significant growth in the levels of the disease placing even more significant pressure on care homes, primary care teams, community teams and hospitals. Looking at our local data, these triggers could be met as early as the end of next week.’

Health Secretary Humza Yousaf said: ‘I’ve been very clear this will be the most difficult winter in NHS history and that’s why we’ve announced £300million of measures to increase NHS and social care capacity.’