Medics are “bracing” themselves for the reopening of pubs on “Super Saturday”, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine warned today.
Pubs, bars and restaurants in England have been closed since March but will be able to reopen on July 4 with certain restrictions.
Some people have criticised the Government’s decision to allow pubs to reopen on a Saturday instead of a quieter midweek day.
Dr Katherine Henderson, president the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We’re bracing ourselves, I think would be a fair way to say it.
“It actually is quite serious, we have emergency departments having to work in a very different way than they did before because we have to keep vulnerable patients safe so we can’t have crowded emergency departments.
“What we can’t do is have a department that gets overwhelmed by people who are injured because they have got themselves into a fight, they have fallen off something, they have drunk so much that they actually need the health service’s help.
“People have been standing at doorways clapping the NHS, well more important than clapping the NHS is using the resources responsibly and anybody who goes out and gets so drunk that they need an ambulance and they need to come to an emergency department is not supporting the NHS.”
The commissioner of the Met Police has already urged people to “be calm, be sensible” when the pubs reopen.
Dame Cressida Dick said that she was “not predicting” violence but that there would be “a lot” of officers on the streets, with “more ready... should people get violent”.
