Visiting has been suspended for all but end of life patients at Leeds hospitals as a post-Christmas and NYE surge of Omicron cases threatens to overwhelm the NHS.
As NHS hospitals in Leeds continue to tackle rising Omicron cases with huge staff shortages, Christ Whitty told Sky News that approximately half a dozen UK hospitals have declared critical incidents in the last few days.
Whilst this is not currently the case for Leeds’ hospitals, some emergency measures have now been introduced to help staff cope under immense pressure – including the banning of all visitors, except for those visiting patients at the end of life stage.
Evidently, the city’s hospitals are feeling the pressure – and whilst the Prime Minister appeared in a press conference last night tonight to announce no more restrictions would be introduced, pressure on Johnson to move decisively continues to grow after he admitted parts of NHS ‘may be overwhelmed’ by this latest Covid wave.
Mark Liddington, Medical Director for Planned Care at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, told the Yorkshire Evening Post:
“Our staff have continued to work extremely hard over Christmas and New Year, caring for high numbers of patients and delivering hundreds of vaccines.
“With the Omicron variant circulating, we are responding to a significant increase in numbers of patients in our hospitals with Covid-19. Unfortunately, this means that visiting is temporarily suspended for adult in-patients unless the patient is at the end of their life, so that we can keep our patients and staff safe.”
“We have a large number of staff isolating with Covid-19 and we are grateful for the flexibility of our teams who are working hard to cover shifts and in some cases are working differently to minimise the impact on patients.” he added
“This increase in staff isolating with Covid-19 is being experienced across all NHS health and social care organisations which means all services are extremely busy.”
Feature image – Flickr
