The news came when UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said officials are considering putting recovering patients from Covid-19 in hotels as a “backup plan”, such is the intense pressure exerted on hospitals by the latest increased infections.
The UK marked its second deadliest day since the pandemic began on Tuesday, with 1,243 new coronavirus-related deaths. It also reported 45,533 new cases, bringing the total number of cases to 3,117,882.
England entered its third national blockade last week as it struggles to cope with the spread of a new, more contagious variant of the coronavirus. The UK government and senior health officials have warned that many hospitals are about to be overloaded.
At a news conference on Monday, Hancock said the variant was “put the NHS [National Health Service] under very significant pressure “, with hospital admissions related to Covid increasing 22% over the previous week.
The study – which has not yet been peer-reviewed – was published on Wednesday by researchers at King’s College London. He analyzed responses to an anonymous online survey in June and July of more than 700 doctors and nurses working in intensive care units (ICUs) at six different hospitals.
Although nearly 60% of respondents reported good well-being, the study found that almost half of the ICU staff reported symptoms consistent with a likely diagnosis of PTSD, depression or severe anxiety or drinking problems.
Almost one in seven (13.4%) of ICU employees reported frequent thoughts of being better dead or of getting hurt in the past two weeks.
Approximately 45% of respondents reached the limit for probable clinical significance in at least one of these measures: severe depression (6.3%), PTSD (39.5%), severe anxiety (11.3%) or drinking problem ( 7.2%).
The nursing team was more likely to report higher levels of distress than doctors or other medical staff, the researchers found. Almost half of those who responded to the surveys were nurses and just over 40% were doctors. The researchers found that doctors consistently reported better health than nurses.
The study, led by Neil Greenberg of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, was published online in the journal Occupational Medicine.
“Our results highlight the potentially profound impact that Covid-19 had on the mental health of UK frontline employees,” says the study.
“(A) probable rate of PTSD that we report was about nine times that found in the general population and more than double that found in recent combat veterans.”
The researchers note that the ICU team experienced many stress factors during the pandemic, including a lack of staff, fear of contracting the virus and putting loved ones in danger, concerns about a lack of personal protective equipment and anguish related to loss of life. patients’ lives despite their best efforts.
The study’s findings will only increase concern about the stress placed on the NHS team in England, as they struggle to treat a record number of patients with Covid-19.
Hancock said on Wednesday that placing Covid patients in hotels was being considered a “backup plan” by the country’s authorities, but that “it is obviously not what I want to do”.
“We are considering all options, it is not something that we are actively implementing. But I would say that this would only happen if it were clinically correct for any individual patient,” Hancock told the BBC.
“There is a gap between the number of cases and the number of people arriving at the hospital. So we know that these pressures on the NHS will continue to increase in the coming weeks,” he added.
Hancock said the Nightingale temporary hospitals set up by the NHS England in the midst of the first wave of the pandemic were there as an alternative to the hospitals.
Asked what kind of patient would be sent to hotels, the Health Secretary said that “it would be for patients who have been dismissed or who have been to the hospital, who no longer need full hospital treatment, but are not quite ready to go home.”
London and southeastern England are among the areas most affected by the new variant, although it has already spread across the UK and has been detected in at least 50 more countries, including the hard-hit Ireland.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan on Friday declared a “major incident” in the English capital “due to the rapid spread of coronavirus … and the increase in Covid-19 cases in hospitals, which put the NHS at risk to be overwhelmed. “
The UK government is pinning its hopes on controlling the crisis in a Covid-19 mass vaccination campaign.
“So far in the UK, we have given 2.6 million doses to 2.3 million people and protected more people with vaccines than all countries in Europe combined,” said Hancock at a press conference in Downing Street on Monday.
Hancock said the UK is on track to deliver a first dose of the vaccine to “all four main groups” – which account for 88% of Covid-19-related deaths – by February 15. These groups cover all homes of elderly residents and employees, all those aged 70 and over and frontline health and social workers.
Two-fifths of those over 80 and nearly a quarter of nursing home residents received their first dose of the coronavirus vaccine on Monday, Hancock said.
CNN’s Martin Goillandeau, Duarte Mendonca and Niamh Kennedy contributed to this report.