Is the NHS in a position to handle the Covid Omicron variant?

How much of a threat does the emergence of Omicron pose to the NHS? Among hospital bosses there is a curious combination of apprehension that the new variant could lead to a surge in infections but also a battle-weary belief, born of negotiating the previous waves of Covid-19, that they can handle a potentially major rise in people seriously ill with the disease.

“Trusts are already making contingency plans for what would happen if there were to be a significant spread of this variant and it turned out that the symptoms and disease produced as a result is as serious as with the Delta variant,” said Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents health service trusts in England.

He added: “If it turns out that this variant does evade vaccines then clearly the NHS will see a significantly higher caseload than it has at the moment.” Hopson pointed out that when the second wave was at its worst in January, hospitals in England were treating 34,000 people with Covid. On Monday, it was far, far fewer – just 6,094.

He said: “The chief executive of a district general hospital told me today that they were going through plans for how they would expand critical care capacity, and their general respiratory support capacity, because that’s exactly what they needed to do last January when we had over 34,000 cases.

A return to that number of hospital beds taken up with Covid patients would again force hospitals to cancel planned operations, he said. “If we get anywhere near the 34,000 cases we saw in January, then something would have to give. Elective surgery could be cancelled. As we saw last January, we would need to prioritise [care] on the basis of clinical need.”

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Source: The Guardian, 29 November 2021