Hospital wards are ‘full to bursting’ with patients suffering a combination of respiratory and flu symptoms in what is known as the ‘quad-demic’, one of the country’s leading doctors said yesterday.
Dr Ian Higginson has warned half of Britain’s A&E units are at full capacity because of the sharp increase in winter illnesses.
The term ‘quad-demic’ is used to describe flu, Covid-19, respiratory syncytial virus – all of which cause difficulty breathing – and norovirus.
Dr Higginson, from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), described the situation within hospitals as ‘pretty grim’.
He explained that patients are being forced to wait in corridors owing to bed shortages, with ambulances queuing up outside, and told of an increased risk to the health of staff.
Dr Higginson told Sky News: ‘Normally, just before Christmas we’d expect a bit of a lull. So I’m afraid things are looking pretty difficult for our patients and for our staff.
‘We simply don’t have enough beds in our hospitals for patients who are admitted as emergencies. We don’t have enough staff for those beds and we don’t have any headroom at all. So if something like the flu hits, as it has done, it makes a bad situation even worse. We have got patients all the way through our corridors because we can’t admit them to hospital when they need to be.’
Dr Ian Higginson has warned half of Britain’s A&E units are at full capacity because of the sharp increase in winter illnesses
He explained that patients are being forced to wait in corridors owing to bed shortages, with ambulances queuing up outside, and told of an increased risk to the health of staff
He said Britain is about 10,000 hospital beds short to deal with predictable medical emergencies, and spikes such as the current quad-demic only make the situation worse.
Giving context, he explained this is the same as being two wards short in every hospital.
Recently, nurses and doctors have been briefed about how to treat patients in corridors. But the RCEM branded the guidance as ‘normalising the dangerous’. Earlier this month the NHS released figures showing 1,861 patients with flu were in hospital every day – up from 1,099 in the last week of November and 402 at the same time last year.
The Labour Budget in October promised to give the NHS £22.6 billion. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, said: ‘For too long, an annual winter crisis has become the norm. We will deliver long-term reforms through our ten-year health plan that will create a health service that will be there for all of us all year round.’
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