FIRST Minister Nicola Sturgeon has chaired a second key meeting to discuss the ongoing pressures on health and social care services.
On Monday, the FM held a press conference in Edinburgh where she confirmed that Scotland’s hospitals were almost “completely full” and that the NHS was in the midst of its “worst winter ever”.
A combination of a rise in respiratory diseases including Covid-19, winter flu and cases of Strep A is causing more Scots to seek medical assistance, and a large number of patients whose discharge from hospital has been delayed, pushing bed occupancy over 95%. At the same time of year pre-pandemic, in 2020, hospital bed occupancy was around 87%.
