Critical care patients in London could be transferred to hospitals in Yorkshire to cope with over capacity, according to a report.
Senior sources in intensive care have told the Health Service Journal (HSJ) that requests have been made to move patients away from the capital due to rising hospitalisation figures.
Data leaked to the publication shows critical care is running at more than 100% of capacity across London and the south east. On Monday night, Intensive Care Unit (ICU) occupancy was at 114 and 113% respectively, while in the East of England it was at 100%.
In each of the regions mentioned over 60 % of the patients filling ICUs were suffering from Covid-19.
To cope, it is likely staff will have to be redeployed from other hospital services.
While critical care patients are often transferred within regions, long-distance transfers between NHS regions are rare.
It is not yet clear whether the transfers have been made or will happen in the coming days.
The alarming report comes after the UK recorded a further 53,135 new cases of coronavirus on Tuesday, the largest daily rise since the pandemic began.
There are now more patients in hospitals across England than at the peak of the pandemic in April with health bosses warning doctors and nurses are ‘back in the eye of the storm’.
In Romford, north east London, patients with Covid-19 have been receiving care in emergency vehicles parked up outside Queen’s Hospital before being moved into the building/
The number of coronavirus patients in ICU in the capital has doubled in the last two weeks from 300 to 636.
A clinician in the capital told HSJ: ‘Capacity in London is looking very serious at the moment: the numbers are still going up.
‘Several hospitals are either at or near their full surge capacity. There is fairly extensive transfer activity between hospitals. It looks like that is going to be the case for a fairly extended period of time and is likely to get worse in the aftermath of the holiday period.’
Intensive Care Society president Stephen Webb said the full force of NHS resources needed to be ‘pointed towards hospitals to support patients with Covid-19’.
He said: ‘We need to acknowledge that really only emergency and urgent operations which require ICU beds can go ahead, so that more staff can be relieved to treat patients with covid-19.
‘We need to ensure that all resources are allocated towards tackling Covid-19 and that this is the focus.’
Despite the surge in patients, it was revealed today that the majority of the emergency Nightingale Hospitals are standing empty as there are not enough staff to run them.
Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden, a critical care doctor in the South East, said: ‘As a doctor who volunteered for the Nightingale I can’t tell you how much effort went into it. But Intensive Care Unit staff are wafer thin on the ground. We had warned of a staffing crisis in ICU before the pandemic, the Government didn’t listen.’
It has been claimed that some NHS trusts are now considering erecting triage tents outside hospitals overrun with Covid patients.
Emergency medicine consultant Simon Walsh said colleagues are working in ‘major incident mode’ and called on the Government to set out a ‘coherent plan’ to get through the coming weeks.
He said: ‘They’re having crisis meetings, they’re calling on staff to come in to work if they’re able to on their days off.
‘They are dealing with queues of ambulances outside many emergency departments, often with patients sat in the ambulances for many hours until they can be offloaded into the department because there simply isn’t any space to put them in.’
Boris Johnson is facing growing pressure to impose a third national lockdown amid the worsening crisis.
He held an emergency meeting with senior ministers tonight, with a decision on changes to the tier system expected to be announced by Health Secretary Matt Hancock tomorrow.
An NHS spokesperson urged people to follow current Government guidelines to reduce transmission.
A statement said: ‘The NHS has tried and tested plans in place to manage significant pressure either from high COVID-19 infection rates or non-Covid winter demands and this has always included mutual aid practices whereby hospitals work together to manage admissions.
‘While the NHS is opening more beds in places like London to care for the most unwell patients, it is vital that people continue to follow government guidance and do everything possible to reduce transmission of the virus.’
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