A health trust in Lancashire has declared "critical incidents" at its hospitals due to “extreme and unprecedented” staff shortages caused by the spread of Omicron.
Morecambe Bay NHS Trust is the latest to join “a number” of trusts to announce in the last few days that they are delivering “compromised care” due to the crisis.
The trust manages Queen Victoria Hospital in Morecambe, Milliom Hospital in Millom, and Furness General Hospital in Barrow-in-Furness.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Dr Sakthi Karunanithi, public health director for Lancashire County Council, said the county was at "the foothills" of an Omicron wave.
He said: "Lancashire is beginning to experience what London did at the beginning of last month and, of course, London is better resourced and the infrastructures are well organised compared to other regions, so we are bracing ourselves for a tsunami of Omicron cases in Lancashire.
"We are clearly seeing a shift from 20s and 30s and 40-year-olds being affected by Omicron to a clear shift to a more 60-plus age group being affected, and that is what is causing us concern as well as the immediate concern being absence, staff absence, both in the NHS and education - schools are just going to re-open this week.
"But this is all meaning that we are not able to concentrate on the non-Covid issues, that's really needing to be addressed immediately as well, so it's a double challenge we face: not only fighting Covid but all the other pent-up demand and need due to non-Covid issues."
The news comes after the United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust (ULHT) said it was “unable to maintain safe staffing levels” in an internal alert leaked on Sunday night, reports the Mirror.
NHS Providers chief executive Chris Hopson tweeted: “A number of trusts across the country have declared internal critical incidents over the last few days.
“One has received particular media attention overnight. But there are others... a trust will declare a critical incident if it believes it might not be able to provide range of critical/priority services it needs to.”
Nationally, tens of thousands of NHS staff are, themselves, going off work because of Covid. Data released on Monday (January 3) shows 24,632 acute Trust staff in England were absent due to Covid illness or isolation on Boxing Day.
Questions are now being raised over whether the NHS can cope with an influx of patients who caught the virus over the past week, when infections surged to unprecedented levels, who will now be requiring hospital treatment in the week ahead.
Some non-urgent operations are already being cancelled but there is speculation NHS could be forced to issue a country-wide instruction to axe elective treatments over the coming weeks.
