Home Europe NHS plea for public help as core services disrupted

NHS plea for public help as core services disrupted

by editor

The head of England’s National Health Service presented a bleak picture Wednesday of a system struggling to cope without public help to stop coronavirus — hours ahead of a Commons vote on a nationwide lockdown.

“No health service in the world can by itself cope with coronavirus on the rampage,” said Sir Simon Stevens, NHS Chief Executive, during a televised press conference.

Sitting with Professor Stephen Powis, NHS National Medical Director, and Dr Alison Pittard, a Consultant in intensive care medicine, Stevens pointed out that hospitals in the North West of England were already repurposing beds from routine operations to COVID-19 patients.

He urged the public to “help us help you … to offer a wider range of care,” warning that a failure to heed lockdown advice would be akin to “taking everyone off the pitch and leaving Pittard as sole goal keeper.”

Powis presented data showing a rapid rise in hospitalizations in recent weeks, with around 500 in-patients in early September compared with over 11,000 today.

In projecting hospital admissions, he said: “Infections that have occurred in the last few days are already baked in.” Powis urged the public to help control infection rates, “comply with social distancing measures, stop transmission, turn the tide … and reduce the number of infections.”

“We can’t stop a heart attack or stroke, but we can reduce the prevalence and transmission of coronavirus in the community,” Pittard added.

Pittard said her own experience of intensive care unit wards this week had found them full of patients with COVID-19. “This isn’t normal. COVID is real,” she said.

The Commons is due to vote at around 4 p.m. Wednesday on new national lockdown measures. A minority of Conservative MPs have made clear their intention to rebel, with some pinning their decision on overestimates of deaths in the figures partly used to justify the new measures announced on Saturday.

Source link

Related Posts