Hospitals are expected to receive additional funding to cover Covid-19 costs from April, the chief executive of NHS England has said.
Sir Simon Stevens said the extra funding in the new financial year is similar to the Chancellor’s approach in setting out funding for test and trace and the broader support package for the economy like the furlough scheme.
Speaking at the Commons Health and Social Care Committee on the health and social care white paper, he said: “The expectation is that the NHS will receive additional funding to cover those unavoidable Covid costs certainly into the first half of the (financial) year.
“There’s an urgent need now to give that funding certainty to hospitals, to local frontline services, and the beginning of the financial year is hoving into view.
“We do expect that that would be resolved very shortly.”
It comes as all regions of England recorded a week-on-week fall in the number of Covid-19 deaths registered in the week to February 26, the ONS said.
South-east England saw the highest number of Covid-19 deaths registered: 481, down 24% from 636 in the previous week.
North-west England saw the second highest number: 396, down 30% from 563.
But the Government’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance said it was inevitable that coronavirus cases would increase as restrictions on social mixing were eased.
But he told MPs that Boris Johnson’s “road map” for easing lockdown in England was in line with the principles set by the Sage scientific advisory panel and “consistent with minimising that increase as you open things up”.
Sir Patrick said: “In terms of the principle of trying to go at a pace that is consistent with the vaccine rollout, so you have got coverage as you begin to release, this is broadly in line with what the modelling suggests is a way to do it that would be better than going fast.
“The sequencing of opening outdoor things before indoor things is consistent with the advice Sage has given.”
He told the Commons Science and Technology Committee: “It is sort of inevitable that as you start to get mixing going again you will see an increased spread – this is how the disease spreads.
“So there will be increases and pressure on R and pressure on transmission as you open things up.”
