A spokesman for the National Health Service (NHS) told CNN on Saturday that those responsible for field hospitals – hurriedly assembled during the first wave of the pandemic, but largely disabled since then – were requested on 23 December to “prepare the services to use.”
The NHS has been under severe pressure in recent weeks, as the new variant of the virus sets in, mainly in southeastern England – including London, Kent and Essex – and parts of Wales.
On Friday, the UK reported 53,285 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 613 new deaths. On Thursday, 55,892 new cases were recorded, the highest daily number in the country since the pandemic began.
According to the latest government health data on January 1, there are currently 22,534 patients with coronaviruses in hospitals across England, of whom 1,940 patients with confirmed Covid-19 infections required mechanical ventilation beds.
Doctors have made passionate appeals to the public to stay home and follow government guidelines on social detachment, as hospitals and other health services are under intense pressure.
In another message posted on Thursday, Pearse said: “The media reports about pressures on the NHS are all true. The situation in London is now MUCH worse than the first wave and is still deteriorating. It is sad to see long lines of ambulances outside the hospital where I work. “
Covid patient ‘record numbers’
London Mayor Sadiq Khan told CNN that hospitals in the capital were dealing with “record numbers” of Covid-19 patients in addition to the normal increase in demand in winter outside Covid.
“We now have more Covid patients in London hospitals than at any time during this pandemic and the NHS in London, hospitals in London and our fantastic healthcare professionals in London are overwhelmed,” said Khan on Thursday.
Khan said he was “concerned” about the overhead of hospitals, but added that the NHS has the flexibility to increase capacity, for example, by canceling certain routine elective surgeries.
“But the big concern we have is, if we continue to see an increase in the spread of the virus, it is possible that hospitals will not be able to deal with this and that is the main concern because we have not yet reached normal January, no – Covid Peak, “he said.
Asked if the military could intervene to help with new patients, UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told Times Radio on Thursday: “Of course, we are ready to help with Nightingales if the critical pressures exceed the capacity of the Existing NHS. “
He said the Army currently has about 5,000 staff deployed in the Covid-19 response.
Most of England is now under the most severe level of restrictions to try to limit the spread of the virus.
Amid the worsening situation, ministers were forced to reverse the decision to reopen some elementary schools in London next week, after being pressured by local authorities and teachers’ unions. All schools in London will now switch to remote education starting on Monday, when the new semester begins, with only children of vulnerable and critical workers allowed to attend in person.
The change of course came just two days after the UK Department of Education said that nine districts in London and the City of London would keep primary schools open, while those in 23 other districts would remain closed. Khan tweeted on Friday that the government “finally realized what was happening and changed” the plan to open schools in some areas.
Vaccine implantation plan
The new strategy, announced Wednesday by the head of the UK drug regulator, MHRA, means that the interval between doses can be extended to up to 12 weeks, instead of the three weeks previously stipulated.
The Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine has been in use in the UK since early December, when the country became the first in the world to approve it, but supplies are limited. Pfizer said it had no data showing that just a single dose of its vaccine would provide protection against the disease after more than 21 days.
UK regulators have also advised the administration of the second dose of the newly approved Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine four to 12 weeks later.
More than half a million doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine will be available starting on Monday, according to UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock, with millions more in the coming weeks. The vaccine is cheaper and easier to distribute than the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine because it can be kept at normal refrigerator temperatures for at least six months.
But even if the government achieves its goal of rapidly inoculating millions of elderly and clinically vulnerable people, thereby reducing Covid-related hospital admissions, the UK faces some difficult weeks ahead.
“It’s a pretty bleak and depressing picture at the moment” in England, Deputy Medical Chief Jonathan Van Tam said at a news conference in Downing Street on Wednesday. “It is almost certain that the NHS has not yet seen the impact of the infections that will have occurred during the Christmas mix and that, unfortunately, is quite worrying.”
New variant most prevalent in children under 20
As of January 1, at least 30 countries, including the United States, had reported cases of the most infectious coronavirus variant first detected in the United Kingdom.
A study by a collaborative team at Imperial College London, University of Edinburgh, Public Health England and others confirmed that the variant was more transmissible and more prevalent in people under 20 years of age.
Although the study, released on Thursday, found that people under the age of 20 represent a larger proportion of cases of the new variant of the virus, its authors said it is too early to determine the reasons for this, adding that new research is under way. in progress.
There is no evidence that the variant is more deadly or causes more serious illness, according to health officials.
Responding to the study, Jim Naismith, professor of structural biology at the University of Oxford, told the UK’s Science Media Center that “it was not really possible to exaggerate the severity of this new strain” in terms of reducing the rate of infection.
“Unless we do something different, the new strain of the virus will continue to spread, more infections, more hospitalizations and more deaths,” he said. “The NHS is under great pressure and, without a change, it will get worse. January and early February will be difficult. If we fail to reduce the spread of the new strain, we will probably overload the NHS, the consequences of which would be dire.”
CNN’s Hira Humayun contributed to this report.