Several hospitals across the country have declared critical incidents due to surging flu cases which has seen A&E departments and wards overwhelmed with patients, with one patient having to wait an agonising 50 hours
Patients have been told to go to A&E alone amidst NHS services in crisis.
Rising winter flu cases have left some emergency departments overwhelmed, with several hospital trusts declaring critical incidents due to “exceptionally high demands”. One patient faced an agonising wait of more than two days – some 50 hours – to be admitted to a ward.
One hospital trust in Yorkshire meanwhile has asked anyone needing hospital treatment to turn up alone. York and Scarborough Teach Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs eight hospitals, said departments were “overcrowded” and asked people not to bring a loved one unless it was a child or carer.
Dr Ed Smith, deputy medical director at the Trust, said: “Our emergency departments are busy all year round but are exceptionally busy at the moment with a high volume of poorly patients attending. This means that the departments can often be overcrowded, with limited places to sit while waiting to be seen.
“While we understand it’s appropriate for a friend or family member to accompany with a child or as a carer for example, if patients can attend alone, this will help free up much-needed space for other patients.” Staff at the Trust, which runs two major hospitals with busy A&E departments, were seeing more than 450 a day, Dr Smith said.
Among the trusts to declare critical incidents are Northamptonshire Cornwall, Liverpool, Hampshire, Birmingham and Plymouth. East Sussex Trust meanwhile said it was temporarily limiting patients to one visitor a day to mitigate the spread of flu.
“This includes those accompanying people waiting in our emergency department,” the Trust said. “Exemptions apply to end-of-life care, our special care baby unit and when visiting children under 16. Additional visitors will be permitted on compassionate grounds on a case-by-case basis for all of our other services.”
A tweet from South West Ambulance Service on Tuesday night said: “We know there are patients waiting for an ambulance, and we will get to them as soon as we can.”
Secretary of State Wes Streeting has admitted he was “ashamed” and “emotional” at the experiences of some NHS patients in an interview, conceding that the lack of appropriate care meant some were being taken “to die”. Acknowledging the “big problem” that was the spread of flu on wards, he told LBC Radio: “It breaks my heart because … I’ve seen this when I’ve been shadowing the ambulance service on ride-outs – we are taking people in ambulances to emergency departments to die because then there isn’t the right care available at the right time in the right place, including end-of-life care.”
Hospital admissions for flu in the week ending December 29 were at 14.09 per 100,000 people, up from 10.69 the week before and 8.72 the week before, according to official data.
