The government could be significantly underestimating the number of medics going off work due to the coronavirus, according to a survey by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP).
The health secretary, Matt Hancock, said on Sunday that 5.7% of hospital doctors were off sick or absent because of Covid-19, but a doctors’ survey of more than 2,500 medics found the rate was almost three times that – 14.6%.
In recent weeks in London, nearly a third of hospital doctors said they were off work for Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 reasons, according to the RCP’s poll of members, conducted on Wednesday and Thursday.
Prof Andrew Goddard, the president of the RCP, said the number who had been off work in London “should be a sobering wake-up call” for the rest of the country, with the largest rises in confirmed cases now being outside the capital including in the West Midlands.
Source: The Guardian, 5 April 2020
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