More good news. This from Chris Hopson CEO of NHS providers and a notable cautionary around Covid and the risks to the NHS, via Twitter (Link at bottom of the read).
Just done an interview this morning on current state of play in trusts particularly affected by variant that originated in India. Member feedback suggests the following. Hospitalisations increasing steadily but not precipitately. The next week or so will be key.
Early signs that the rate of community infections is beginning to peak in some places. Example of increases / estimates of hospitalisations from one hospital: 20 last week, 40 this week, predicted 60 next week and this hopefully being peak, assuming infection peak reached.
But trust CEOs are clear that modelling of future hospitalisations feels very uncertain given number of variables and unreliability of modelling in previous waves. They want to see what happens over the next seven days which they are describing as "the crucial week".
The average district general hospital bed base = circa 400-500. So trust leaders saying that having 60 out of 400 beds occupied by Covid-19 patients - 15% - is very different to the 50% / 60% Covid-19 patient bed occupancy rates we were seeing at the start of this year.
CEOs struck how, as expected, hospitalisations are very much
focused on unvaccinated – either eligible unvaccinated or younger people not yet vaccinated. Very small numbers of two dose vaccinated patients and hospitalisations in this category have clear co-morbidities.
Trust CEOs saying they can see difference in protection levels between single and double doses. If so, vindication of JCVI's decision to bring forward the second dose timing from 12 to 8 weeks and stresses importance of all eligible getting vaccinated as soon as possible.
Trust leaders saying that the proportion of hospitalisations requiring critical care is significantly lower than previous waves. They're linking this to much lower age range of hospital patients compared to previous waves e.g. in one trust c70% are under 45.
Trust leaders also re-doubling their efforts around preventing hospital acquired infection given the seeming 30-50% greater transmissibility rate of this variant. And, obviously, doing all they can to assist with wider community effort to rapidly increase vaccination rates…
with particular emphasis on identifying and vaccinating those eligible who have not yet been vaccinated. Trusts are also working hard to be ready for any increase in hospitalisations should it arrive. As well as promptly completing numerous information requests (!)
Trust CEOs looking for much better quality of national public health advice communications in affected areas e.g. around local lockdowns. "People can't follow advice if they don't know it exists. And any approach needs to be agreed with the relevant local authorities".
CEOs relieved that they are seeing very few, if any, care home residents with covid-19. They’re also very grateful, as ever, for staff flexibility and work to deal with those cases who are arriving. In summary, manageable so far but next seven days will be key.
That was from yesterday. Update today.
Just a quick addition to my earlier thread on the impact the variant originating in India is having on the NHS. There is some potentially misleading media reporting today making links between how busy hospitals currently are and pressures from covid-19...
Talking to more hospital CEOs in affected areas, their trusts are v busy. But it's due to a combination of the following five things:
A. Going full pelt on elective backlog recovery.
B. Increasing, but still small compared to Jan/Feb, numbers of covid-19 patients....
C. Very busy accident and emergency departments with high numbers of high acuity patients, many needing significant treatment / admission.
D. Trusts re-organising themselves to be ready in case Covid-19 numbers do significantly rise over the next week (not expected)...
4/5 ...
E. Trusts doing all they can to avoid slowing down on elective recovery despite slowly rising numbers of Covid-19 patients and pressurised accident and emergency pathway. EG Fascinating conversation with CEO this morning. If trust has more than 10 Covid patients...
They have to start taking wards out of commission to isolate/treat those patients, impacting on elective recovery. They're understandably doing all they can (more reorganising type work) to avoid this happening. So busy hospitals don't automatically mean big covid surge.
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