A spokesman for the National Health Service (NHS) told CNN on Saturday that in-charges of the area’s hospitals, who were in a hurry but mostly muted during the first wave of the epidemic, were told to “prepare services” on December 23. To use. “
The NHS has come under serious strain in recent weeks as it has caught new strains of the virus, particularly in London, Kent and Essex – and parts of Wales, in the south-east of England.
On Friday, 53,285 newly confirmed Covid-19 cases and 613 new deaths were reported in the UK. On Thursday, it reported 55,892 new cases, the highest daily number in the country since the epidemic began.
There are currently 22,534 coronavirus patients in hospitals in England, of which 1,940 patients with Kovid-19 infection require mechanical ventilation beds, according to the government’s latest healthcare figures as of January 1.
As hospitals and other health care services come under intense pressure, doctors have appealed to people to stay at home and follow government guidelines on social distance.
In another message posted Thursday, Pierce said: “Media reports of pressure on the NHS are all true. The situation in London is much worse now than it was in the first wave, and is still deteriorating. I am saddened to see long queues of ambulances outside the hospital.”
‘Record number’ of Kovid patients
London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan told CNN that the capital’s hospitals are working with a “record number” of Covid-19 patients on top of the normal, non-Covid winter growth in demand.
“There are now more cowardly patients in London’s hospitals than ever before during this epidemic and during the NHS in London, the hospitals in London and our wonderful health workers in London are stretched,” Khan said on Thursday.
Khan said he was “concerned” about being overcrowded in hospitals but added that the NHS has the flexibility to increase capacity, for example by canceling certain routine, alternative surgeries.
“But the big concern we have is, if we keep seeing an increase in the spread of the virus, it’s possible that hospitals don’t have the capacity to cope and that’s especially worrying because we haven’t reached the normal January yet,” said the able-bodied. He said.
“We are ready to help the Nightingales if dramatic pressure exceeds the capacity of the existing NHS,” UK Defense Secretary Ben Valce Les told Times Radio on Thursday, asking if it could take military action to help new patients.
He said the Covid-19 response currently has 5,000 Army personnel deployed.
Much of England is now under strict levels of control to limit the spread of the virus.
Amid the deteriorating situation, under pressure from local officials and pressure from education unions, ministers were forced to reverse the decision to reopen some primary schools in London next week. All schools in London will now switch to remote learning from Monday, when a new term will be introduced, allowing only sensitive and complex working children to be present in person.
The UK Department for Education’s Department of Education said nine boroughs in the City of London and London City Primary Schools would remain open, while schools in 23 other boroughs would remain closed. Khan tweeted on Friday that the government has finally made sense and made a U-turn on plans to open schools in some areas.
Vaccine roll-out plan
The new strategy, announced on Wednesday by the head of the UK’s drug regulator MHRA, means that the interval between doses can be extended to 12 weeks instead of the previously set three weeks.
U.K. The Pfizer / Bioentech vaccine has been in use since early December, when the country became the first country in the world to recognize it, but supply is limited. Pfizer said it did not have data to show that a single dose of its vaccine would provide protection against the disease after more than 21 days.
UK regulators have also recommended a second dose of the newly approved Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine four to 12 weeks later.
More than half a million doses of the UK Xford / AstraZeneca vaccine will be available from Monday, according to UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock, and millions more will have to follow it in the coming weeks. This vaccine is cheaper and easier to dispense than Pfizer / Bioentech because it can be kept at regular refrigerator temperature for at least six months.
But if the government achieves its goal of quickly inoculating millions of elderly and medically vulnerable people, there is a reduction in admissions to covid related hospitals, with the UK facing some tough weeks ahead.
In England, “this is a very scary and depressing picture at the moment,” Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van Tam told a Downing Street press conference on Wednesday. “It is almost certainly true that the NHS has not yet seen the effects of the infection during the Christmas season and is unfortunately disappointed by it.”
More variants are more prevalent in the under-20s
On January 1, more than 30 cases of coronavirus infection were first reported in the UK, including in the United States.
A study by a collaborative team of Imperial College London, University of Edinburgh, Public Health England and others found that the variable was more transmissible and more prevalent among people under the age of 20.
The study, which was released on Thursday, found that people under the age of 20 accounted for a large proportion of new cases of the virus, with its authors saying it was too early to determine the cause, adding that further research was ongoing.
According to health officials, there is no evidence that this type is more fatal or causes more serious disease.
Responding to the study, Jim Nasmith, a professor of structural biology at Oxford University, said that in terms of reducing the rate of infection, the UK’s Science Media Center said “how serious this new strain is” is not very possible.
“The strain of the new virus continues to spread until we do something different, more infections, more hospitalizations and more deaths,” he said. “The NHS is under severe stress and without change this will only get worse. It will be difficult in January and early February. If we fail to reduce the spread of new strains, we are likely to drown the NHS, with dire consequences.”
Hira Humayun of CNN contributed to this report.
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