A major UK hospital has been unable to carry out any planned operations on Thursday and Friday due to a lack of intensive care space.
The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham has one of the biggest intensive care units in Europe, but it has had to cancel operations including liver transplants and cancer surgery.
It is down the the University Hospitals Birmingham Trust being hit by the “perfect storm” of rising Covid cases, along with a rise generally of emergency cases and long queues in A&E departments.
Similar cases of delays and cancelations have been repeated around the country including Newcastle upon Tyne Hospital.
June was reportedly the busiest month ever for England’s A&E departments while ambulance trusts are also receiving record numbers of callouts.
Staff at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham were told the operations were cancelled due to a lack of “bed capacity”.
It is reported that there were 107 patients in intensive care on Thursday with 28 of those suffering from Covid. Overall there were 163 Covid patients in the trust, an increase in 36 from the previous day.
The situation has been made worse by staff absences from work due to suffering from Covid or from having to isolate. Data seen by The Independent shows that 275 of 1,091 of absent staff are due to Covid related reasons.
Ian Sharp, deputy medical director at the University Hospitals Birmingham, has said the pressures on the trust were a "perfect storm".
"We are working very hard to limit delays at the front door of our hospitals," said Sharp told Birmingham Live.
"But the pressure at the front door - whether from people who should be able to access care elsewhere, or from Covid, or from other acute illnesses and conditions - is very high."
On the easing of Covid restrictions he said: "Personally I think it's important that society is able to return to something that appears like normal and the people making these decisions have far more information at their fingertips than I do - but am I worried about the implications for us and the health system in general? Yes, I am.
"It feels like something of a perfect storm."
