Frontline hospital workers have warned a new coronavirus wave, rising Covid admissions and staff shortages mean the situation in one region’s hospitals is “on a knife edge”.
Greater Manchester’s lead Director of Public Health said it was “no surprise” that coronavirus rates were back on the climb, close to three weeks to the day after the government rolled back the remaining Covid safety measures.
But while the official picture is one of getting back to normal and ‘living safely with Covid’ - the region’s NHS medics and managers say differently, the Manchester Evening News reports.
The region’s hospitals have only battled back from "one admission away from disaster" as they fought Omicron in the New Year.
The situation is still "on a knife edge", and an uptick in coronavirus cases could spell yet more stress for staff and risks to patient safety, according to a pandemic-weary workforce.
Frontline staff said they feared 'another Omicron' scenario will hit hospitals and a doctor warned another round of elective surgery cancellation could not be ruled out.
The wave that battered the NHS late last year and early this year left thousands of staff having to isolate themselves in January, leaving staffing stretched so thin that many felt the situation unsafe.
February and the beginning of March marked a hope that things would get better, they said, a precious few weeks of breathing room after "the worst phase of the pandemic" for a number of burned out, traumatised staff.
Yet, lurking in the background at first, then increasingly coming to the fore, a spike in coronavirus rates is threatening that welcome respite.
Before patients even get to hospital, they must navigate an emergency system in high demand. At times throughout the pandemic, the most serious category 999 calls have been at "unprecedented levels".
Some families have claimed their relatives would still be alive had paramedics not been so rushed off their feet that they took hours to arrive at an emergency .
And the situation was starting to ramp back up again, said one North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) paramedic, who wished to remain anonymous.
"Late last year and early this year we had an unprecedented amount of calls,” he said.
“It was insane. NWAS covers a very large area and everywhere was slammed. Things have eased slightly but are slowly ramping up again.
“I remember years ago when a bad New Year’s Eve would mean we had 100 jobs waiting and everyone would be flapping. Now, that’s a Wednesday morning and it’s classed as normal.”
When patients arrive, they can find themselves "waiting on corridors for hours", claimed one Greater Manchester senior emergency medicine consultant.
Hospital occupancy in Greater Manchester was now teetering at a colossal 94 per cent full, as of March 18. Senior health leaders say hospitals should be at around 80 per cent to keep going safely.
“Hospitals are overwhelmed and cannot cope with the amount of people attending A&E,” explained Dr Carole Gavin, a Greater Manchester-based consultant and Vice President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM).
“Unfortunately the ambulances sometimes get used almost as an extra bed or ward.”
“The usual pressures in A&E and in community services means people are stuck at both the front and back door,” adds another senior hospital consultant, who wishes to remain anonymous.
As the Omicron wave reached its peak in January, Greater Manchester again cancelled its non-urgent surgery, a sure sign of desperate bed and staffing shortages.
In the words of one junior doctor at the time, "if it’s not going to kill you, we’re probably not going to do it".
The elective work resumed only a few weeks later, but the halt was enough time to add hundreds of more people to already-lengthy waiting lists.
Yet Bolton’s Covid vaccine lead and GP, Dr Helen Wall, said she didn’t think she could rule out surgeries having to be cancelled again in the near future.
Coronavirus infection rates are climbing in all 10 boroughs of Greater Manchester during a national surge in Covid cases.
In Greater Manchester as a whole, the infection rate is now 504.1 cases per 100,000 population.
The infection rate in the region is lower than the national average, which is 801.6 cases per 100,000 people.
