If the goal of the UK government during the coronavirus pandemic has been to protect healthcare, the next few weeks will be the biggest challenge yet.
After re-overtaking Italy as the country with the highest death toll in Europe, the UK is at the epicenter of the struggle to control Covid-19. The number of daily infections has risen – one in 50 people in England now has the disease – as Prime Minister Boris Johnson closed schools this week and ordered the population to stay at home.
Medical staff say they may be forced to send people away from hospitals if the latest lockdown fails to quell a new strain of the virus that surfaced in South East England last month quickly enough.
Winter is already stretching health care, and the virus means more patients are ending up in the corridors and others needing to be treated in parked ambulances. The British Medical Association, which represents physicians, said the National Health Service is facing a crisis as rampant infections are combined with illness and staff burnout.
“There are so many thousands of patients coming in,” said Tom Dolphin, 42, an anesthetist at a hospital in London. ‘The disturbing thing is that we probably haven’t seen the peak of the patients who became infected yet during the Christmas and New Year period. “
Ambulances in front of Royal Liverpool University Hospital on January 5th.
Photographer: Christopher Furlong / Getty Images
During 10 months of anxiety left In tackling the pandemic, the British government managed to keep the country’s precious NHS afloat and then became the first Western country to immunize its citizens. That now threatens to be a hollow victory as an accelerated vaccine program races against a virus that got out of hand.
Medics had pressured Johnson to take nationwide action amid the surge in cases in recent weeks. But even on weekends, the government was suggesting that schools would remain open.
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New treatments mean that a higher proportion of Covid-19 patients are being kept alive, but many still have to stay in the hospital because of breathing difficulties. This also puts capacity under pressure. The health system had already entered the pandemic in which about 40,000 nurses were short.
For nurse Stuart Tuckwood, the tougher lockdown brings at least some relief, as the country desperately waits for the vaccination push to bear fruit.
“People know how bad things are and how much worse they will get if the cases continue to rise as they are,” said Tuckwood, who works in a hospital in the south of England and is also a national nurse at Union Unison. ‘We cannot trust that the vaccine is the magic solution. There should be no complacency about the ability of the health department and staff to deal with it. “
On January 5th, a pedestrian walks down Regent Street in London.
Photographer: Hollie Adams / Bloomberg
According to Bloomberg, the death toll in Britain was 76,423 Coronavirus Tracker, after the number of fatalities has been surpassed in Italy in recent days. The number of daily cases on Tuesday rose to nearly 61,000 – the highest number since the coronavirus invaded Europe, as well as after the UK stepped up testing.
Johnson said in a televised address Monday that the number of Covid patients in hospitals in England was 40% higher than the first peak in April. The pressure in intensive care units during the holidays was already severe, with figures published in the Health Service Journal showing they were operating at over 110% capacity in London and South East England at the end of December. Some patients had to be transported hours away to the South West or North of England.
The dramatic escalation prompted Johnson gamble on multiple fronts. The government is not just trying to re-lock the nation quickly increase the number of people getting their first dose of vaccine by pushing back their second injections.
That is to expand the supply of the two vaccines being rolled out: one from Pfizer Inc. and partner BioNTech SE and the other from AstraZeneca Plc and the University of Oxford. The move received support from some health experts, but raised concerns from others, including Pfizer.
The goal is to maximize the number of vulnerable people who receive at least some protection in the shortest possible time. British health authorities have pointed to data showing that the vaccines provide significant defense after a single dose, with the second shot being important in the longer term.
Johnson said on Tuesday that 1.3 million people have been immunized, or nearly 2% of the population, by far the most in Europe. According to Bloomberg, Germany vaccinated 317,000 people on January 5 and France only 2,000 Vaccine Tracker. The London government has set a target to vaccinate nearly 14 million people by mid-February.
Brian Pinker, 82, will receive the AstraZeneca Plc and Covid-19 vaccine from the University of Oxford at Churchill Hospital in Oxford on January 4.
Photographer: Steve Parsons / PA Wire / Bloomberg
The reality, however, is that Britain has little choice. New infections in the UK – 720 per 100,000 residents for 14 days – ran at more than according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control at the end of December twice as much as in Italy or France.
According to the NHS Providers group, there are nearly 9,000 more coronavirus patients in hospital beds than on Christmas Day – the equivalent of nearly 18 hospitals.
The pressure on doctors and nurses is mounting, and “that really raises the need for a new way of thinking,” said Doug Brown, CEO of the British Society for Immunology. “The risk of not doing this is much higher.” In a normal world, the country would stick to the dosage tested in the clinical trials, he said. “We are not in a normal world at the moment.”
Protecting the NHS resonates in Britain. During the first lockdown in the spring, people stood at the door and every Thursday night they applauded the health workers and children painted rainbows to stick on the front windows. The government is confident that a tired nation will rise again, with the NHS now holding the key to rolling out the vaccines.
Read more: British hospitals face breaking point as Johnson prepares for lockdown
Finding and deploying enough staff to perform about 2 million vaccinations per week is not an easy task and will have a major impact on healthcare, said Richard Sloggett, a former special adviser to Secretary of Health Matt Hancock.
“It certainly feels like we’re getting to a point where we’re betting the house on a vaccine program,” said Sloggett, a senior fellow at the Policy Exchange think tank.
The hope is that the lockdown will work before hospitals can’t handle it, said Dolphin, the anesthetist, who is also a member of the BMA board. The restrictions will apply in England at least until mid-February, although Johnson said at a press conference on Tuesday that there are many more months of restrictions ahead.
“It gets to the point where the service is not what we would normally recognize as being appropriate for the UK,” said Dolphin. “Or actually suitable for any country.”
– With the help of Suzy Waite, Neil Callanan and Eric Pfanner