Haemorrhaging of the Nation’s Health Service Has Now Startedhttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/nhs-hospitals-really-brink/amp/In London, you would be ill-advised to climb a stepladder, let alone get on a motorbike given the level of demand in the capital’s hospitals.
For category three admissions - those that are urgent, but not immediately life-threatening - the wait for a hospital bed now stretches to 30 hours, says the city’s ambulance service.
More worrying, national data released on Friday by the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (INARC), shows ICU admissions for heart attack and stroke have fallen sharply in recent weeks, suggesting many are not getting the help they require.
“It's implausible to think that these have been misclassified as Covid as the symptoms are so clear, particularly in an ICU setting”, says the Covid-19 Actuaries Response Group. “The concern is that people are failing to present, as happened in April”.
A drowning person closes off blood oxygen supplies to their extremities in a bid to survive, and so it is with health systems that are struggling to cope.
Although there has been no national edict as there was last Spring, large parts of the NHS in London and the south-east are now closing their doors to regular business. In London, where the mayor declared a “major incident” on Friday, hundreds of cancer operations have already been cancelled.
Lifeguards learn that drowning swimmers seldom shout or wave their arms. Their energies are focused on trying to stay afloat.
It was a phenomenon missed by an ignorant crowd who, in the early hours of New Year’s day, gathered outside St Thomas’ Hospital in London shouting "Covid is a hoax". Inside hundreds of Covid patients were “sick and dying”, noted Matthew Lee, a young doctor coming off his shift.
These and other so-called “Covid sceptics” are the equivalents of those who stormed the US Senate on Wednesday; ordinary, if weak, people who have surrendered their cognitive powers to the opium of conspiracy theory and disappeared down its wormhole.
Last week they sparked further anger among NHS leaders and staff by circulating images of empty hospital corridors on social media, claiming them as “evidence” that the crisis was being overegged.
The reason parts of many hospitals are empty is explained by the crisis itself. Outpatient and visiting areas are closed, while many corridors are being used as “firebreaks” to stop the spread of the virus. In the same vein, patients are being held in car parks at many hospitals.
Circulating pictures of empty hospital spaces was like noting the corridors of a football stadium were empty during “extra time in the World Cup final”, said Prof Goddard. “All the action is on the field and in the stands, where it needs to be.”
Another myth doing the rounds is the idea that hospital admissions are no worse than during a normal winter. But this too is nonsense.
Despite flu having all but been killed off and trauma cases resulting from accidents being greatly subdued by lockdowns, the number of adults in critical care in hospitals in England stands far above historic levels.
The first three days of 2021 saw the number of patients in critical care in English hospitals soar to unprecedented levels, with almost 4,000 patients in critical care.
.. the crunch will only really come if an entire NHS region - of which there are just seven - became overwhelmed.
“As long as a region doesn't fall over, then that means individual hospitals and even systems can help each other out. But when you get to regions it is much harder to see how that would work”.
He added: “The region that I'm most worried about is the South West. Covid cases are up 33 per cent on a week ago and that rate of growth is nearly double what it was a week ago. The East of England region is also growing fast.
“London, on the other hand, is still going up but it is slowing. It’s going to be very bloody but the London region as a whole may just about get away with it”.
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More than 80,000 people have died in the UK within 28 days of a positive Covid test since the start of the pandemic, official figures have shown.
A further 1,035 deaths in the UK were reported on Saturday, taking the total by that measure to 80,868.
The number of daily cases of people who tested positive for coronavirus increased by 59,937.
The number of infections recorded in the UK has now been above the 50,000 mark for 12 consecutive days.
Higher cases inevitably mean more hospitalisations and more deaths.The most recent figures show that, on average, 894 people per day are now dying within 28 days of a positive Covid test, up from 438 at the start of December.
The spike in cases since Christmas means that figure is almost certain to get worse before the most recent lockdown measures can start to have any affect.
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‘A Mass Fatality Event’: California Struggles With Backlog of Bodies of COVID-19 Victimshttps://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-09/with-hospital-morgues-overwhelmed-by-bodies-coroner-begins-storing-bodies-as-covid-deaths-surge?_amp=true
A dozen refrigerated containers brought in to store the bodies of COVID-19 victims are parked at the Los Angeles County coroner’s complex on Thursday... The Los Angeles County coroner’s office is accelerating efforts to temporarily store corpses as the local death toll hits record levels.
This week, six members of the California National Guard arrived to assist county workers in transferring bodies from hospital morgues to 12 refrigerated storage units parked at the coroner’s office, said Sarah Ardalani, spokeswoman for the office. Additional helpers from the National Guard are expected to come next week.
Last spring, the coroner’s office had anticipated a surge in the dead and at least quadrupled its storage capacity to at least 2,000 bodies by bringing in the 12 refrigerated trailers, according to Ardalani. There are also additional trailers that can each hold about 25 bodies each.
As of Monday, the coroner’s office was holding 757 bodies.
At the end of November, the beginning of the most recent COVID-19 surge, the containers held only about 60 bodies.
Then the pace of fatalities began rising. In early December, about 30 people a day were dying; by Friday, the seven-day average was about 190 people a day.
More than 4,200 COVID-19 deaths have been reported since Dec. 1, an astonishing number in just a matter of weeks. The cumulative number of dead in L.A. County from the disease is 11,872.
In just the last four days alone, an average of 250 COVID-19 deaths a day have been reported in L.A. County. That’s higher than the average number of daily deaths from all other causes combined, including heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, car crashes, suicides and homicides, which is about 170.
... How much extra space the county will ultimately need depends on how quickly funeral homes and mortuaries can process bodies, Vohra said.
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Coming to a Black Market Near You: Covid-19 Vaccine https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1253504The much-criticized rollout by the Trump administration has laid the groundwork for a scenario in which the rich and the politically connected use their money and power to cut in line and get vaccinated before everyone else, experts are warning.
There have been reports in Miami of big hospital donors getting the first crack at the vaccine and in New York of tycoons flying their friends down to Florida to get inoculated with doses earmarked for a retirement home.
And in Colorado, some teachers are crying foul after nurses and educators in wealthier public school districts and private schools got inoculated first.
Arthur Caplan of New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine and one of the nation’s top bio-ethicists said the lament will likely be heard a lot more as the divide grows between vaccine haves and vaccine have-nots.
“We’re hearing about some politicians, some trustees of big hospitals and others getting shots ahead of health care workers and elderly people,” Caplan said. “I’m also hearing that some [drug manufacturing and distribution] companies are saying that as soon as the government contracts are filled, they’re going to make getting vaccines for themselves a priority.”
... “Anything that’s seen as life-saving, life-preserving and that’s in short supply creates black markets,” Caplan said
Scarcity helped turn toilet paper and masks into gold early in the pandemic, and it’s likely to do the same for vaccines, making them especially attractive to thieves and foreign copycat artists, other experts said.
"The danger is there is an already existing market for unregulated drugs," said Michael Einhorn, president of medical supplier Dealmed. "And the issue is that products will be imported from foreign countries that may not have as strict regulations as the United States — where product can be diverted, sold on the side and imported to the United States."
“The vaccine is likely to have a high ‘street value’, making government supplies an attractive target for theft and diversion unless adequate safeguards are built into supply chains,” Cushing wrote.
"There have been reports of substandard or falsified vaccines already being made in India, and also falsified hand-sanitizers in the U.S.A. appearing throughout the course of the pandemic," he said.
... “I’d argue that much of the planning for distribution in the U.S. has been done too late in the day, and the lack of guidelines, and clear eligibility criteria for receipt of vaccines are probably the root cause of many of the issues being faced in the U.S. at the moment," he added. "And subsequently this lack of planning gives rise to opportunities for individuals to jump the queue, and to exploit their position to get vaccines ahead of others."
Dr. Sadiya Khan, an epidemiologist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, agreed and added that
the lack of a coherent vaccine distribution plan is clear evidence the federal government did not learn from its failure to ramp up testing as a means of slowing the spread of the virus.“The absence of any federal infrastructure across counties and states is leading to an unmitigated disaster in addition to inefficient distribution,” Khan said. “Vaccine distribution is the Groundhog Day of what Covid-19 testing was in the beginning of the pandemic. These considerable delays are likely to lead to more hospitalizations and deaths that could be preventable.” ...
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