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- On Tuesday, the UK reported a record number of new COVID-19 infections.
- Public health officials have expressed “extreme concern” about the strain being placed on hospitals.
- The number of patients in English hospitals is now higher than during the first peak in April.
- Ambulances have been piling up outside hospitals due to the lack of available beds.
- London hospitals, particularly intensive care units, are overwhelmed with some hospitals reporting concerns about dwindling oxygen supplies.
- Scientists are calling for a total national lockdown, but Health Secretary Matt Hancock has delayed the decision.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
Hospitals in England face an unprecedented level of demand due to an increase in people seriously ill with COVID-19, amid fears that the nation’s health service is collapsing under relentless pressure on its resources.
Much of the country remains under strict Level 4 lockdown regulations, an attempt to deal with the new, possibly more infectious, contagious variant that may be behind the worrying increase in reported cases.
Despite the restrictions, the numbers continue to rise and public health officials are increasingly concerned.
Susan Hopkin, Senior Medical Adviser at Public Health England, said on Tuesday: “We continue to see record levels of COVID-19 infection in the UK, which is of extreme concern, especially as our hospitals are at their most vulnerable.” .
NHS England data has revealed that there were 20,426 patients in its hospitals as of Monday morning. Currently, there are more patients in English hospitals than during the peak of the first wave in April.
NHS hospitals are under so much pressure that some patients must be treated in ambulances, according to Sky News.
An anonymous doctor told the station: “Patients are first treated by ambulance personnel when they pick them up from their homes. And then when they arrive at the emergency department, they wait in the vans until a bed is available.”
In recent days, ambulance teams have been waiting up to six hours to deliver patients to hospital staff, according to the BBC.
The shortage of beds in hospitals has caused ambulances to pile up in front of several of them.
Images posted on social media show fleets of emergency vehicles lined up in front of Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital and two London hospitals – the Royal London Hospital and the Queen’s Hospital.
—Shaun Lintern (@ShaunLintern) December 29, 2020
—Rachel Clarke (@doctor_oxford) December 29, 2020
In London, the situation is dire. On Boxing Day, the London Ambulance Service (LAS) told ITV News that they had experienced “one of the busiest days in their history.”
On Tuesday, many Londoners received a text message urging them not to call an ambulance unless it is an emergency. “The London Ambulance Service and our hospitals are very busy,” the text explains.
—Shaun Lintern (@ShaunLintern) December 29, 2020
The extraordinary number of calls to emergency services has forced control room personnel to make difficult decisions about who is treated by paramedics. “Our control room staff have to make incredibly difficult decisions to decide who gets an ambulance first and who they are going to ask to wait,” a paramedic told Sky News.
‘It’s a time bomb’
Within UK hospitals, there are also signs of serious stress.
Intensive care capacity in London was 114% on Monday night. The overcapacity led to requests to move some patients hundreds of miles from London to Yorkshire, according to the Health Service Journal.
The transfer of patients between distressed hospitals happens regularly, a senior NHS source told the Independent. “It’s a time bomb,” they said.
In some cases, the need to transfer patients is the result of decreased oxygen supply.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Hospital Trust at London’s North Middlesex University said the influx of patients “was putting pressure” on oxygen supplies, according to The Independent.
A day earlier, London’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital had been forced to divert ambulances to other hospitals due to similar concerns about oxygen supply. The hospital later declared a “major incident.”
A “major incident” has also been reported in Essex.
Essex Police Chief BJ Harrington told The Guardian: “Reporting a major incident allows us to seek further support from the Government to address the serious pressures on the healthcare system due to Covid-19.”
Scientists from the Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies have called on the UK government to implement an “immediate national closure” to help ease some of the pressure on hospitals.
Despite this call, Matt Hancock told Good Morning Britain that a national shutdown is not imminent. Instead, the health secretary is expected to announce that more areas will be subject to Level 4 lockdown restrictions.
On Tuesday, the UK recorded its highest number of new COVID-19 infections to date. The daily figure of 53,135 new infections exceeds the 41,385 previous cases registered the previous day.
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