UK hospitals scramble to make space for patients as Covid-19 cases soar

British hospitals are canceling non-urgent procedures and scrambling to find space for Covid-19 patients as coronavirus cases continue to surge across a weak healthcare system, despite tough new restrictions imposed to curb a fast-spreading new variant of the virus.

Dr. Nick Scriven, immediate past president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said Monday that the rising number of hospitalised patients was “extremely worrying.”

“With the numbers approaching the peaks from April, systems will again be stretched to the limit,” he said.

New virus variant blamed

British authorities are blaming a new variant of the coronavirus for soaring infection rates in London and southeast England. They say the new version is more easily transmitted than the original, but stress there is no evidence it makes people sicker.

In response, authorities have put a swath of England that’s home to 24 million people under restrictions that require nonessential shops to close, restrict indoor socialising and allow restaurants and pubs only to operate for takeout.

Even so, hospital admissions for Covid-19 in southeast England are approaching or exceeding the levels seen at the first peak of the outbreak. 

Government figures show 21,286 people were hospitalised with the coronavirus across the UK on Dec. 22, the last day for which data is available. That is only slightly below the high of 21,683 Covid-19 patients who were recorded in UK hospitals on April 12.

Dr. Katherine Henderson, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, described her experience working in a hospital on Christmas Day as “wall-to-wall Covid.”

“The chances are that we will cope, but we cope at a cost,” Henderson told the BBC. “The cost is not doing what we had hoped, which is being able to keep non-Covid activities going.”

READ MORE: UK business groups infuriated with new Covid-19 restrictions

Britain has already recorded more than 70,000 deaths among people with the coronavirus, one of the highest tolls in Europe.

Cabinet Minister Michael Gove said more parts of England might have to be put into the toughest tier of restrictions if case numbers do not fall. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also have implemented strong lockdown measures.

Still, there is rising confidence help could soon be on the way, with expectation mounting that UK regulators may authorise a second coronavirus vaccine this week.

British media reports say the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency is likely to give the green light to a vaccine made by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.

READ MORE: How Oxford’s Covid-19 vaccine went from leading the pack to trailing behind

Immunisation efforts

The regulator authorised a jab made by US pharmaceutical company Pfizer and German firm BioNTech on Dec. 2, making Britain the first country to gain access to a rigorously tested vaccine. More than 600,000 people in the UK have received the first of the two shots needed of the vaccine.

If the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine is authorised this week, members of the public could start receiving it from Jan. 4. Britain has ordered 100 million doses, compared to 40 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot.

The AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine is considered a potential game-changer in global immunisation efforts because it is less expensive than the Pfizer shot and does not need to be stored at freezer temperatures, making it easier to distribute.

But it had less clear-cut results from clinical trials than its main rivals. Partial results suggest that the shot is about 70 percent effective for preventing illness from coronavirus infection, compared to the 95 percent efficacy reported for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

But the trials produced two different results based on the dosing regimen used. Researchers said the vaccine protected against disease in 62 percent of those given two full doses and in 90 percent of those given a half dose followed by a full dose. 

However, the second group included only 2,741 people — too few to be conclusive.
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