Ministers mull moving patients to hotels as hospitals become overwhelmed
The NHS is considering plans to transfer patients to hotels as hospitals become overwhelmed with Covid-19, the health secretary said this morning.
Matt Hancock announced the government would not rule out any options to relieve pressures on the NHS and refused to speculate about how long lockdown restrictions could last.
The health secretary told BBC plans being considered would involve “step-down patients who have been in hospital but no longer need the full hospital treatment but aren’t quite ready to go home.”
“This obviously would be a further backup plan. We consider all the options,” he added.
Hancock said the NHS Nightingale Hospital in London had begun re-operating but insisted that ministers had alternative plans in place to meet tougher demands.
There are currently more than 35,000 coronavirus patients receiving treatment in hospitals across the UK.
The mayor of London last week declared a “major incident” amid warnings that London hospitals are on the brink of being overwhelmed with Covid patients.
Sadiq Khan warned that the London Ambulance Service is now taking up to 8,000 emergency calls a day, compared to around 5,500 on a typical busy day.
Meanwhile, more than 800 patients are being admitted to London’s hospitals with coronavirus every day, NHS England chief executive Sir Simon Stevens warned on Tuesday.
“That’s equivalent to a new St Thomas’ hospital full of Covid each day”, he added.
The number of patients in the capital’s hospitals rocketed more than a quarter between 30 December and 6 January, with the number on mechanical ventilation jumping more than 40 per cent.
A growing number of Conservative MPs are urging ministers to begin easing England’s national lockdown restrictions from 8 March, but the health secretary insisted that it was “impossible to know” a specific date.
“We will keep the restrictions in place not a moment longer than they are necessary, but we will keep them in place as long as they’re necessary,” Hancock said.
The government is pledging to offer a first Covid vaccine dose to 15m of the UK’s most vulnerable people by 15 February.
Speaking on LBC this morning, Jonathan Van-Tam, deputy chief medical officer, said the first dose would provide “a protective effectiveness of something close to 90 per cent”.
But ministers have warned that the prospect of widescale vaccine rollout does not offer a “free pass” for the public and cautioned that further restrictions could be enforced if compliance does not improve.
Van-Tam shot down claims that social distancing rules may increase from two metres to three metres, but added that mask-wearing in indoor spaces was key to curbing the spread of the virus.