Coronavirus hospital cases are still rising in the North, despite signs of "flattening out" elsewhere.
And even if numbers do start to fall, it could take a month for the pressure on the NHS to ease.
That was the message from the Chief Medical Officer on Friday night, who also presented the stark warning that the “very high” rate of deaths “will take longer to come down and will probably go up over the next week.”
Professor Chris Whitty tonight said there were early signs that hospitalisations are beginning to come down in the south east, east of England and London, The Mirror reports.
But the numbers are still rising in the North, as well as the Midlands.
Although infection rates were going down, the pressure on the NHS and the risk of more and more deaths remained high.
He said: “There has been a turning of the corner on that and the number of people with infections has gone down.
“There are definite signs of improvement but from a very high level.
“This [slide] then looks at the number of people in hospital with Covid in the UK and it’s increasing all the time, and has been over the last several weeks, and is now at an extraordinarily high level.
“But there’s now signs of this beginning to flatten out, in some parts of England – particularly the south east, east of England and London – there’s now signs of some reductions but at an incredibly high rate still.”
Even if those reductions in admissions spread across the country, our hospitals might not feel the impact for a month.
A SAGE paper published on Friday suggested that even if new hospital admissions come down, it will take weeks for the number of occupied beds to fall.
That is because people can remain in hospital for weeks with Covid-19, only leaving when they either recover, or if they are killed by the virus.
Sir Patrick Vallance said the “awful” death rate will stay “high for a little while” before declining, regardless of the impact of the new variant, which is said to be more deadly..
SAGE, meanwhile, warned the vaccine won't help cut the death rate until "later in February".
The paper dated January 7 said: “Mortality reductions from vaccination will not begin to be seen before the end of January at the very earliest, and more likely it will be later in February.”
The January 7 SAGE paper added: “The pressures on the NHS will take longer to reverse.
“This is because on average, the age of those being hospitalised and entering ICU is lower than the age of those who die.
“So many of the people going into hospital and ICU are not in the groups which will be vaccinated first, though they are still largely from groups within the JCVI phase 1 priority list.”
