More than twenty hospitals reported, in recent days, a maximum alert level meaning that they are no longer able to ensure an adequate level of care for patients.
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Some encouraging signs in London, a critical situation in the south-east and a landscape that darkens at high speed in northern England: the Omicron wave continues to impose considerable pressure on the British health system (The famous National Health Service, NHS), emphasizing even more its serious structural weaknesses.
In the capital, epicenter of the Omicron epidemic, the pace of hospitalizations seems, certainly, to slow down. According to the latest official data, the number of new infections, over the seven days before January 1, is declined by 25.5% in the City and the Hackney district (in the East from London). On the other hand, over the same period, infections jumped 130% in Cumbria (northwestern England) and 124.7% in Northumberland (Northeast). Thursday, January 6, 179,756 positive cases had still been deducted at the national level over the last twenty-four hours.
“The growth of the number of new positive cases clearly slows in London. But the wave now reaches older populations, and it is too early to observe the effect of end-of-year celebrations and return to The school “, Chris Hopson alert, director of NHS providers, organization representing hospitals. “The pressure moves from London to the rest of the country, with hospitalizations related to the rising coronavirus, and the absences of personnel are combined with an already very tense hospital situation,” adds the specialist, worried that the institutions of the north of the country , less well endowed than those in the South, have more trouble holding the shock.
Long wait for an ambulance
Downing Street confirmed, Wednesday, January 5, that “more than twenty” hospitals (all outside London) reported a “critical accident” in recent days, that is to say a maximum alert level meaning that they are no longer able to ensure, with their internal staff, an adequate level of care. In the Southwest, the Hospitals of Bath, Poole or Bournemouth are concerned: only 4 free beds in Poole Wednesday, and 25 in Bournemouth. The 17 Grand Manchester (northwest) hospitals deprogramped non-urgent operations, while the number of hospitalizations tripled in fifteen days from 1,200.
It is not sure that “the health system succeeds in overcoming” the wave, warned Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Grand Manchester. The national media even reported that in the north of the country, people fearing to be victims of a cardiac arrest and calling on the 999 emergency number received the advice to go to the hospital by their own means, so much Waiting times for an ambulance are long. “Here we always advise people taken from a malaise to call 999 for an ambulance”, Nuance Dr. Brian McGregor, President for Yorkshire (Northeast) of the British Medical Association, the main British Syndicat of Doctors .
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