Warning that NHS hospitals running out of beds

Analysis has revealed that increasing numbers of hospitals in England are running short of beds and having to divert patients elsewhere.

According to the NHS figures, hospitals had to tell ambulance crews to divert patients elsewhere 44 times last week – the highest number for four years. This is in addition to hospitals having to cancel operations as the NHS struggles to cope with the resurgence of coronavirus.

The pressures are compounded by the numbers of NHS staff who are themselves off work because of the virus, with doctors and NHS leaders saying that frontline services will come under even more intense strain in the next few weeks. Already, University College London hospital has been forced to declare an ‘internal incident’, because of ‘insufficient capacity for emergency and Covid patients’, while Northampton general hospital has also cancelled some planned operations as the number of people it is treating who are seriously ill with coronavirus rose to 181.

Given that restrictions are being relaxed for the festive period, NHS bosses are concerned about whether services will be able to cope over the coming weeks.

Dr Nick Scriven, the immediate past president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said: “We have talked for many years about an ‘eternal winter’ in the NHS and the challenges that alone brings all year round, but the actual winter is now on our doorstep amid a pandemic of the nature of Covid and no one can say with certainty just how destructive that could be.

“What we do know is that the country is in the grip of one crisis and is about to embark on another in the coming weeks and the fact that we will see a festive period with families mixing strikes fear into the hearts of clinicians on the frontline.”