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London, Jan 3: Hospitals across the UK are being told to brace themselves to face the same Covid pressures as the NHS in London and South East England.
Senior physician Professor Andrew Goddard said the highly infectious new variant of the virus was spreading across the country.
The number of cases was “slight” compared to where he expected them to be next week, he said, with doctors “really concerned,” the BBC reported.
It occurs when 57,725 more people have tested positive for Covid, a new daily high.
This is the fifth day in a row that new daily cases have exceeded 50,000 and brings the total number of cases to 2,599,789.
Another 445 deaths, of people who tested positive in the previous 28 days, were reported on Saturday, bringing the total number of deaths to 74,570, according to government figures.
The total number of people hospitalized with Covid across the UK has already passed the spring peak.
Half of England’s major hospital trusts are said to be dealing with more Covid-19 patients than at the worst of April’s first wave, with the NHS facing its ‘busiest winter’.
Professor Goddard from the Royal College of Physicians told BBC Breakfast: “There is no doubt that Christmas is going to have a great impact, the new variant is also going to have a great impact, we know that it is more infectious, more communicable. So I think the big numbers that we are seeing in the South East, in London, in South Wales, will now be reflected in the next month, even two months, in the rest of the country. “
He said: “It seems very likely that we will see more and more cases, wherever people work in the UK, and we must be prepared for that.”
The pressure has been so great on hospitals in London and the South East of England that some patients have been transferred out of the area.
The weekly rate of coronavirus cases in London is 858 per 100,000 people, double the figure in the UK.
Dominic Harrison, director of public health for Blackburn and Darwen, said the decision on a new lockdown should be made “in the next week”, rather than waiting for the North to reach the same rates as the capital “and” call it late. ‘ , which has been our response pattern all too often ”.
The most recent statistics from across the UK, from December 28, showed that there were 23,823 people in the hospital with Covid. That was already significantly higher than the spring peak, which saw 21,683 in the hospital on April 12.
Only English hospitals have released figures for the last three days of December, showing that a further 2,302 Covid patients were occupying hospital beds on December 31.
London’s Nightingale emergency hospital is ready to admit patients, the NHS said, while other sites that are currently not in use are being prepared.
Disclaimer: This story is automatically generated from the IANS service.
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