London hospitals are facing a "wicked combination" of surging demand and "unprecedented" staff sickness rates during the Covid-19 pandemic, a senior health service figure has warned.
Hospital bosses are seeing a "continuous tsunami" of patients and absence rates of up to 50 per cent, Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday.
"They are struggling with two things - the first is the explosion of demand they are seeing in seriously ill patients ... they talk about wave after wave after wave – the word that’s often used to me is a continuous tsunami," he said.
"And we are now seeing 30 per cent, 40 per cent and indeed in some places 50 per cent sickness rates as staff catch the virus or are in vulnerable groups or have to self-isolate - and, again, that’s an unprecedented absence rate.
"So what we have got is a really wicked combination of trusts trying to deal with a lot more demand than they have ever had before with a lot fewer staff than they have had before."
Critical care capacity has been expanded between five and seven times already and while additional capacity is being brought in – including 4,000 beds at the new emergency field hospital being built inside the Excel centre in London’s Docklands – hospital chief executives are concerned that it will be used up "very, very quickly", Mr Hopson said.
London hospital Northwick Park was last week briefly forced to declare a "critical incident" due to a shortage of intensive care beds caused by a surge in the number of coronavirus patients. The hospital, based in Harrow, stood the incident down within 24 hours.
More than 9,500 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in the UK, but the actual number of cases is estimated to be much higher. The overall death toll now stands at 463, three weeks after the first coronavirus-related death in the UK was reported on March 5.
Most of the cases have been recorded in England, with London being the hardest-hit region.
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But speaking on the same programme as Mr Hopson, Professor Neil Ferguson, of Imperial College London, said he believes the health system has the capacity to cope with case numbers in the capital and elsewhere in the UK, adding that the lockdown will lead to a "plateau" in the number of infections.
"We are going to have a very difficult few weeks, particularly in hotspots – London for instance," Mr Ferguson said.
"But we think, overall, with the capacity which is rapidly being put in place across the country, that whilst the health system will be intensely stressed, particularly in areas of London, it won’t break.
"Perhaps in about three weeks we hope these current measures will start flattening that curve and start bringing numbers down."
