The large number of COVID-19 patients being admitted to hospitals at the centre of the second wave will “devastate” care for people with other illnesses, a top doctor has said.
Dr Tristan Cope said Liverpool’s acute hospitals would not be able to continue providing normal care because of the high number of people being treated for serious Covid symptoms. Unless the surge in coronavirus admissions slowed down it would “have a devastating effect on planned care, such as operations”, he said.
Cope is the medical director of Liverpool university hospitals NHS trust, where almost all critical care beds are already full because the city’s high infection rate has placed intense pressure on the trust’s three hospitals: the Royal Liverpool, Broadgreen and Aintree.
“Liverpool hospitals are under enormous pressure with admissions of sick Covid patients. We are used to pressure, but this is over and above that,” Cope tweeted last week.
“We have the highest number of Covid patients in the UK, nearly as many now as at the peak of the first wave. We also have more Covid patients in ICU [intensive care units] than any other trust in the UK.”
Cope said: “If we don’t reduce the rate of infection in the community and Covid admission rates continue to rise, it will inevitably have a massive effect on non-urgent care."
“If we don’t get control of [the] spread of the virus in the community and admissions continue at the current rate, our hospitals will not be able to cope. This will have a devastating effect on planned care, such as operations.”
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Source: The Guardian, 15 October 2020
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