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Hospitals have suspended non-emergency surgeries as covid cases continue to rise across the Northwest.
Demand for space in area hospitals is increasing as the virus spreads through the worst affected areas of the country.
Wigan Hospital is one of the affected locations, according to the Manchester Evening News, with the number of Covid patients outside the ICU in Wrightington, Wigan and the Leigh NHS Trust, on Sunday, at 97% of its peak on April 30.
The trust has now stopped non-emergency procedures and raised its official alert level.
It is understood that most of these patients are between the ages of 61 and 85, although there are also a considerable number of people between the ages of 40 and 50 who enter and remain in the hospital for some time.
That, in turn, is putting pressure on the entire hospital system.
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A senior politician said: “When people say that the NHS will be able to ‘cope’ what do they mean?
“Are we talking about its ability to deal with Covid? Or are we talking about its ability to cope with all the other things the NHS has to do?
“It’s a combination of the year-round crisis on the NHS with Covid.
“So in a way, Wigan is a bit of a concern for the rest of Greater Manchester.”
While community transmission in other districts here had been widespread, and in some respects never gone away, after the first peak, in Wigan, as in Liverpool, it remained comparatively low until the end of the summer.
Since then, cases in both areas have skyrocketed, as have hospital pressures.
A senior figure said that there has been a marked trend in cases among middle-aged people, even if the majority still correspond to those over 60.
They added: “It is the 40-60 age group that is suffering the most serious illness this time.
“It’s a classic image of ‘wave two’ of a pandemic.
“In fact, the longest stay in Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh is in this age group, although the largest volume is for people 61 to 85 years old.
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“It is understood that Wrightington Hospital has canceled all emergency, cancer and emergency elective surgeries, while all surgery electives at Leigh have also been stopped.”
The Nightingale hospital in Manchester opened on Wednesday and is expected to be used largely for people without Covid as a transitional facility, freeing up beds for Covid patients.
It is understood that it will have a mix of GPs, agency and bank staff, in addition to staff from existing hospital trusts, although it is unclear what the impact on individual hospitals will be as a result.
All trusts in the region were asked to comment, but none did.
It is understood that all communications during the pandemic now have to go through the NHS England, which means that requests to individual trusts are largely unanswered.
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