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Hospitals are under “extreme pressure”, the chief executive of NHS England has warned, with a coronavirus patient admitted “every 30 seconds” as the foreign minister has said the government aims to offer a first vaccination to the entire UK adult population in September.
Sir Simon Stevens said the health service has never been in a more precarious position.
Speak to the BBC Andrew Marr Show, he said, “The facts are very clear and I will not put them to sleep: hospitals are under extreme pressure and staff are under extreme pressure.
“Since Christmas Day we have seen another increase of 15,000 inpatients in hospitals across England. That’s the equivalent of filling 30 hospitals with coronavirus patients.
“Surprisingly, every 30 seconds across England another patient is admitted to hospital with coronavirus.”
Pressure on the NHS has led to three in four paramedics being at ‘breaking point’, suffering from low morale and demanding better protective equipment, a new study from the GMB union has shown.
“In 24 years in the ambulance service, I have never seen the staff sitting at the station at the start of the shift so scared (almost to tears) to step out in an ambulance,” one response read.
GMB Country Manager Rachel Harrison said: “This cannot continue – something has to give.
“The ambulance staff are leaving in droves sick while the service collapses around them, despite their heroic efforts.
“A whopping 93% are calling for better protection. The PPE given to them is simply not fit for the intended use and is a major factor in why the situation is so dire. “
Another 38,598 laboratory-confirmed coronavirus cases were recorded on Sunday and 671 deaths within 28 days of a positive test.
Dominic Raab told BBC One Andrew Marr Show this general vaccination could be carried out earlier if the capacity is available to do so.
But government sources said reports of a private target at the end of June to kick all under-18s were “speculative.”
The government has previously pledged to only offer a first dose of vaccine in mid-February to everyone over 70, residents of nursing homes for the elderly, healthcare workers, and nursing home care workers. people with serious underlying health problems.
But the foreign minister told Marr: “The plan is to have the first 15 million most vulnerable people vaccinated with the first dose by mid-February.
“We then want to arrive at the beginning of spring for an additional 17 million. At this point, 99% of those most at risk of dying from coronavirus will be given with a vaccine.
“The whole of the adult population that we want to be offered a first shot by September.
“This is the roadmap. We believe we have the capacity to do it.
“Obviously, if it can be done faster than that, then that’s a bonus. The first thing to do right now is to protect this roadmap and to deploy and protect the NHS, given the new variations that we have seen. “
Sir Simon told Marr that the health department is now vaccinating at a rate of “140 strokes per minute” and will begin testing 24/7 vaccinations in select hospitals over the next 10 days.
Sir Simon has said he expects the lockdown to be gradually relaxed around spring and summer.
He said, “It won’t be that on Valentine’s Day, with a leap, we are free.
“Likewise, I don’t think we’ll have to wait until fall. I am thinking somewhere in between these two. “
But he warned that this prediction was subject to uncertainty over new variants of the coronavirus – particularly those showing signs of resistance to available vaccines.
Mr Raab said the government hoped to start easing lockdown restrictions as early as March, but said the measures would be gradually relaxed, rather than withdrawn overnight in a “big bang”.
He told Sky News Sophy Ridge Sunday: “What we want to do is get out of these national lockdowns as soon as possible.
“The roadmap I have outlined is that in early spring, hopefully by March, we will be able to make those decisions.
“I think it’s fair to say that we won’t do all of this all at once. As we end the national lockdown, I think we will end up taking the tiered approach gradually.
“We want to make sure we can do it in a safe way. But again, at this point we need to really focus on protecting the NHS and rolling out the vaccine. If we do these two things, we’ll end up in a much better place in early spring. “
More than 3.5 million people in the UK have now received their first dose of a vaccine, and some 324,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccine have been given within 24 hours.
Leading epidemiologist Prof Azra Ghani said a combination of low numbers of cases and vaccination of the most vulnerable would be needed before restrictions can be relaxed.
She told Sky: “Really, we want to go back to where we were this summer, with a relatively low number of cases compared to now, so that we can actually test, trace and reduce further infections.
“At the same time, of course, we are deploying a vaccine; this is something we haven’t had so far and the vaccine rollout is going very well.
“We hope this will protect those who are most vulnerable to the serious consequences of this disease.
“We have to strike a balance between these two things before we can start lifting the restrictions and it’s very difficult to say exactly when that will be the case.”
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