24 NHS trusts face critical incidents as waiting list hits 6MILLION

Twenty-four NHS trusts have now declared ‘critical incidents’ amid staffing shortages and rising Covid admissions — but ministers have downplayed the warnings saying it is not unusual for hospitals to face winter crises.

Grant Shapps said that 24 out of England’s 137 trusts — or 17.5 per cent of the entire health service — had signalled they may not be able to deliver critical care in the coming weeks.

But the Transport Secretary poured cold water over the alerts, telling Sky News: ‘It’s not entirely unusual for hospitals to go critical over the winter with things like the flu pandemic.’

The full list of trusts has not been made public, however those which have raised the alarm include North East Ambulance Service, Dorset County Hospital and Great Western Hospitals.

Trusts declaring critical incidents can ask staff on leave or on rest days to return to wards, and raising the alarm enables them to receive help from nearby hospitals.

It comes as MPs warned the patient waiting list has hit 6million in England alone, and could double in three years without further action due to pressure on the health service.

But Boris Johnson said yesterday that life could be back to normal by February, after cases rose by just six per cent in a week yesterday. The UK recorded 194,747 daily cases, compared to 183,037 last Wednesday.

The Prime Minister has held his nerve in the face of the spiralling Omicron wave — unlike his counterparts in Scotland and Wales — and imposed no new curbs over the holidays, winning him praise from Tory MPs.

Former Prime Minister Theresa May hailed Mr Johnson, telling the Commons: ‘May I commend you for resisting calls from Labour for more restrictions before Christmas. It’s not in the national interest to shut down sectors of our economy every time we see a variant.’

Lockdown-sceptic MP Steve Brine also heeralded the PM, saying: ‘The Prime Minister deserves real credit for decisions in respect of Covid — he has followed the evidence and taken the wider view of our society and economy.’

NHS hospitals are currently facing severe pressures from a staffing crisis fuelled by Covid, with one in ten medics now thought to be off sick, and an increase in Covid hospitalisations.

And GPs are now also short-staffed, with the head of the Royal College of GPs Professor Martin Marshall warning a ‘growing number’ of clinicians and other staff members are isolating because of the virus. He warned of the ‘pressure’ GPs were under, and said patients with ‘minor self-limiting problems’ should try to treat themselves where possible using online resources, or visiting pharmacies. 

Some medics are calling for self-isolation to be slashed to five days in line with France and the US as long as it is backed up by the science, to help get staff back on to wards faster.

But Government scientists have warned against the move saying it would be ‘counter-productive’ because it risked sending infectious employees back onto wards. 

© Provided by Daily Mail

© Provided by Daily Mail
The number of daily positive Covid tests recorded in England has exceeded 100,000 for nearly two weeks. However, the number of patients in hospital with the virus is a fraction of the level seen last winter, while deaths remain flat

Mr Shapps said NHS hospitals were facing ‘very real pressures which I absolutely recognise’. 

He defended the Government’s decision not to go further than ‘Plan B’ restrictions for England despite the pressure on the NHS. 

‘We are always trying to find the right compromise on going too tight on restrictions – lockdowns, let’s face it, they have a lot of costs connected,’ he said.

‘Then again, not wanting our hospitals to be overrun. This is where I think Plan B has been shown to be the right approach so far.’

Professor Marshall told Sky News that a growing number of doctors and support staff in GP surgeries are isolating or have Covid.

He said: ‘We’ve got very significant pressures in general practice, which are long-standing of course but are made considerably worse by the Covid pandemic, and particularly by this Omicron variant.

‘We’ve got a growing number of clinicians and administrative staff in general practice who are either unwell or who are isolating, and are unable to contribute to the growing number of consultations that we’re providing and the vaccination programme that we’re contributing to as well. So we’ve got a significant crisis on top of a long-standing one.’

He said there is a need to communicate to the general public ‘the pressure that general practice is under and explain why it isn’t possible to provide the service, the access and the quality of care that we would expect and want to be able to provide’.

He added: ‘We also need to be able to direct patients who’ve got minor self-limiting problems to other resources, whether it be online, whether it be pharmacies, and we also, I think, need to be able to help our patients to self-care wherever that’s possible.

‘But the big issue here is the long-term crisis, which is about the recruitment of the 6,000 extra GPs and the 26,000 other health professionals which the Government committed to in 2019, but unfortunately isn’t delivering on at present.’

It comes as MPs warned today that efforts to clear record waiting lists risked being thrown off course by a staffing shortage caused by Covid isolation rules.

The Commons health and social care committee said there were 93,000 vacancies in the health service, with rules forcing staff to self-isolate for at least a week if they test positive for Covid adding to the shortfall.

The committee said NHS staff are under pressure from multiple angles as they deal with routine care, Covid and soaring demand for ambulances and A&E.

MPs fear workers will quit unless they see ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ in the form of more recruits.

They say tackling the wider backlog caused by the pandemic is a major and ‘unquantifiable’ challenge as it includes all those who have yet to come forward for care.

Committee members want a broad national recovery plan embracing emergency, community and social care, as well as mental health and GPs.

The report said: ‘Of the 5.8million patients waiting to start treatment in September 2021, 300,000 have been waiting more than a year and 12,000 more than two years.’

But it cautions: ‘With Covid-related measures such as social distancing and staff self-isolation constraining NHS capacity, we heard it is extremely difficult to accurately quantify the true scale of the backlog.’

Former Health Secretary and committee chair Jeremy Hunt warned that NHS workers were retiring early because of the ‘stress and pressure’ they faced, combined with ‘perverse’ pension arrangements.

He said preventing doctors and nurses from leaving the health service was crucial to addressing a backlog of almost six million people waiting to receive NHS treatment.

Speaking to LBC, the chairman of the Health and Social Care Committee said: ‘I think one of the things that will make a difference is to do things that stop people leaving the NHS.

‘We’re getting a lot of people leaving the NHS, we’re getting a lot of people who are retiring early because of the stress and pressure.

‘Some people find that it doesn’t pay to work beyond a certain age because of the pension arrangements, which are very perverse at the moment, so we could attack those.

‘But I would say, most of all, what people want to know is that the pressure of not having enough doctors and nurses is not going to go on forever.’

It comes amid mounting pressure to cut self-isolation periods to five days to help ease pressures on the health service, with doctors warning current guidelines were adding to ‘misery’ and ‘crippling’ the health service. 

They are also calling for guidelines on patients exposed to a Covid case to be reviewed, which currently require them to isolate for 14 days from last exposure if they remain in hospital. 

This applies to all patients, irrespective of whether they have been fully vaccinated or had a previous Covid infection. The same rule applies if the patient is discharged to a care home — they must be isolated for the remainder of the 14-day period. 

Pat Cattini, an infection control nurse at the Royal Marsden NHS foundation Trust, told the Health Service Journal (HSJ) the guidance has never been updated ‘despite vaccination and changing epidemiology and is crippling healthcare’.  

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