Welsh hospitals facing ‘unprecedented pressure’ due to Covid-19 patient spike and staff sickness

Welsh hospitals are facing “unprecedented pressure” due to a spike in Covid-19 patients and staff sickness, a public health official has said.

The situation saw the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff put out an appeal for extra staff to work in its critical care department on Boxing Day.

Problems have also been experienced at the three district general hospitals across North Wales, which collectively had the worst emergency department performance figures in Wales last month.

Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board partly blamed Covid-19 social distancing measures and a subsequent loss of beds after nearly six in ten patients had to wait longer than four hours to be seen at one A&E department in November.

Dr Giri Shankar from Public Health Wales provided an update on the latest situation at hospitals across the country during an interview on the BBC Wales Breakfast Show on Monday.

He said: “That (hospital pressures) is incredibly concerning. Our health and social care system have been under enormous pressure – unprecedented.

“I think it’s a combination of large numbers of patients with COVID in hospitals and large numbers of other infections or other diseases or conditions that people are with in the hospitals.

“On top of that, what’s also happened is that a significant proportion of our workforce are themselves sick and unwell.

“Just before Christmas, the sickness ratio was just around 10 to 12% and that’s a large number of unavailable workforce.

“Therefore, as you saw yesterday and the day before, health boards are making a plea for whatever help they can get from various sources, including medical students, ex-health care professionals, and so on.

“It is an incredibly challenging situation and, and not just in Cardiff and Vale but across all our health boards.”

Dr Shankar said he was “cautiously optimistic” about a recent drop in the number of coronavirus cases across Wales.

However, he said the impact of people mixing over Christmas was hard to forecast and depends on how closely people stick to the rules.

He said: “It’s very difficult to predict because if people have been absolutely clear in their actions, individually and collectively, of reducing mixing with other people, then we would expect that case numbers do not exponentially take off.

“But if that isn’t the case, then in the coming week or two, we might see a further increase.

“However, with the tier four restrictions that are in place, and with only reasonable excuses for people to leave home, I would expect that eventually it will start to come down.”

Dr Shankar said the current restrictions would need to remain in place for at least three weeks to see cases truly begin to drop or longer if they are to reach a manageable level.

He warned that the early months off 2021 were likely to be difficult for the health system in Wales, but added the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine offered hope for the future.

He said: “We do have to prepare ourselves for a very challenging couple of months in January and February, no doubt about that.

“But I think there are things that we have to do, which is to to comply with the guidance, make our interactions very, very limited to only as essential as possible.

“Together, individually and collectively, we can make a difference to minimise the impact of it.

“There’s no doubt it’s challenging times over next two months, but we do we have to stick together to get over this.”

He added: “Public Health Wales was the first organisation in Wales to have conducted the clinical trial for the Oxford vaccine and colleagues in my team have been incredibly closely involved in that.

“It is quite exciting for us and we are eagerly awaiting the outcome of the regulatory agencies, who have been closely studying the safety and efficacy data.

“If such an approval comes through, it will ad to an existing vaccine and therefore expands the range of options available to vaccinate more people in as quick a time as possible.”