U-turn As Schools And Rising Covid Cases Crash Expectation of new year easing

Government hopes for a new year easing of the Covid pandemic are unravelling, with ministers forced into a U-turn on reopening primary schools and hospitals across the country struggling with rising numbers of severely ill patients.

As the crisis escalates, the Nightingale hospital built in London’s ExCeL centre is expected to take Covid patients next week, for the first time since the spring.

Hospitals in east London are under extraordinary pressure, while Essex and Buckinghamshire have both declared a major incident, which enables local leaders to seek government support. Other major hospitals around the country are preparing for the worst.

Government hopes for a new year easing of the Covid pandemic are unravelling, with ministers forced into a U-turn on reopening primary schools and hospitals across the country struggling with rising numbers of severely ill patients.

As the crisis escalates, the Nightingale hospital built in London’s ExCeL centre is expected to take Covid patients next week, for the first time since the spring.

Hospitals in east London are under extraordinary pressure, while Essex and Buckinghamshire have both declared a major incident, which enables local leaders to seek government support. Other major hospitals around the country are preparing for the worst.

Tracey Fletcher, the chief executive of Homerton hospital in Hackney, posted a graph on Twitter of their Covid admissions on New Year’s Eve, showing high numbers of patients in wards and critical care in every age group, from 27 between the ages of 25-44 to 41 who are 65-74 and 17 over 80. “Admitted patients = extremely sick patients. No-one is partying at @NHSHomerton tonight. Please comply with all Covid restrictions,” she tweeted.

In Essex, a major incident has been declared, with patients airlifted from an overwhelmed hospital in Southend to Cambridge.

The Essex Resilience Forum (ERF), made up of members of the NHS, emergency services and local authorities, said this week that the number of patients in Essex receiving treatment for coronavirus had now increased to levels exceeding those seen at the peak of the first wave.

Those numbers were expected to increase further in the coming days and that cases were particularly high in mid and south Essex.

Lisa Ward, a lead respiratory nurse for Southend hospital, tweeted last night that the hospital was in a “very bad way”. Ward pleaded with the public to stay at home after she finished her shift.