Tag: Hospitals
Browse the articles related to this topic below.
More than 10,000 people acquired coronavirus when they were being treated in hospital for other illnesses, The Telegraph can disclose.
Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said that 139 out of 357 Covid-19 patients they had treated had caught the virus there – 38.9 per cent – with board papers showing that five patients had died.
When children and teens are overwhelmed with anxiety, depression or thoughts of self-harm, they often wait days in emergency rooms because there aren’t enough psychiatric beds.
The problem has only grown worse during the pandemic, reports from parents and professionals suggest.
With schools closed, routines disrupted and parents anxious over lost income or uncertain futures, children are shouldering new burdens many are unequipped to bear.
Categories
Does the NHS really need protecting? – BBC
A quick glance at the latest data on hospital beds shows there were nearly 13,000 beds free at the end of November.
That’s 50% more than last winter.
https://web.archive.org/web/20201202041425/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55151832
- Two-thirds of the private sector capacity that was block-purchased by NHS England was left unused over the summer
- Unprecedented block contracts in place for almost all the private hospital capacity, thought to be worth around £400m per month
- Comes as waiting times for elective care and diagnostic tests have steeply increased
- Capacity to carry out chemotherapy treatment was among that not fully used
- Insiders blame confusion and communication over contracts, and some argue the contracts were not needed
YouTube has removed interview so we have archived the video in the above location. It is currently available on Unlocked Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/unlockedunitedkingdom/videos/vb.112364983833705/409747283542470/
- Despite the fearmongering, the number of Covid-19 deaths is significantly lower than the peak back in April
- Latest ONS estimate shows that in the week ending November 14, new infections were already levelling off
- GCHQ has embedded a team in Downing Street to provide Boris Johnson with real-time updates of Covid-19
- Analysts will sift through vast amounts of data to ensure Boris Johnson has the most up-to-date information
The Imperial model had larger errors, about 5-fold higher than other models by six weeks. This appears to be largely driven by the aforementioned tendency to overestimate mortality. At twelve weeks, MAPE values were lowest for the IHME-MS-SEIR (23.7%) model, while the Imperial model had the most elevated MAPE (98.8%). Predictive performance between models was generally similar for median absolute errors (MAEs)
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.13.20151233v5.full
- The vaccine reduces symptoms; may prevent infection but this has not been proven.
- Mass testing is not the way out and could be very problematic.
- Around 1% of the population are infected and probably have no symptoms.
- If you are under 65, there is less risk than the regular flu.
- The number of people dying is the same as any other year.
- People of dying of respiratory diseases is about the same.
- Covid deaths will continue to go up.
- Hospitals are less full because they’ve increased their capacity; they’re not struggling to cope.
- Prevalence for the virus has plateaued.
- We should continue to be careful but COVID-19 is ‘not a major player’
THE fact that Covid cases were already plummeting across London is yet more evidence the new lockdown is a mistake.
Yes, a few hospitals around Britain are under huge strain, as NHS chief Simon Stevens says.
But many have few Covid patients or none.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13122295/the-sun-says-new-national-lockdown-mistake-covid/
* Beds have never been less than 85% full for a three-month period since 2010
* Spring this year was the first time, because patients were turfed out for Covid-19
* And occupancy remains below average levels despite second wave, stat shows
* Boris Johnson has returned to his ‘protect the NHS’ slogan for second lockdown
NHS hospitals in England appear quieter than usual for this time of year even though they are treating more than 9,000 patients with coronavirus.
Update seen by Telegraph shows capacity tracking as normal for beginning of November, with usual numbers of beds available
Hospital intensive care is no busier than normal for the majority of trusts, leaked documents have shown, raising more questions about whether a second national lockdown is justifiable.
Our mission: save the NHS by neglecting ourselves and the NHS. I received numerous CCG advice and flow-charts on the coronavirus-centric mass processing of patients. Most of it was about whom not to see, and who could pass the pearly gates of the hospitals. Then there was the advice on the parallel IT and video-consultation medical industrial revolution: our new NHS normal.
…For clarity, the “D” in coronavirus means “disease”, the second “S” in SARS-CoV-2 means “syndrome”. In a sense, the WHO had already decided Covid-19 was a distinct disease entity caused by a novel coronavirus before characterising it as a syndrome called SARS-2, and before the naming of the virus as SARS-CoV-2. The importance of scientific syntax and semantics cannot be overemphasised. Such cognitive slip-ups trickle unnoticed into general parlance and may have fatal consequences for us as a species.
Without a definite cause, one cannot definitively conclude to treat anything in particular. Is Covid-19 a syndrome, a mixed bag of symptoms and signs that has been negligently and politically globally fast-tracked to a scientifically wrong conclusion? Is it, in practice, a conflation of different, distinct disease entities including influenzae, rhinoviruses, pneumoniae and other coronaviruses, not to mention other non-infectious phenomena?
https://thecritic.co.uk/the-covid-physicians-true-coronavirus-timeline/
- We have experience of SARS in 2003 and MERS in 2012, while in the UK there are at least four known strains of coronavirus which cause the common cold.
- Many individuals who’ve been infected by other coronaviruses have immunity to closely related ones such as the Covid-19 virus.
- Multiple research groups in Europe and the US have shown that around 30 per cent of the population was likely already immune to Covid-19 before the virus arrived – something which Sage continues to ignore.
- Prof. John Ioannidis, professor of epidemiology at Stanford University in California, have concluded that the mortality rate is closer to 0.2 per cent – 1 in 500 infected die.
- Around 45,000 Covid deaths in the UK
- Approximately 22.5million people have been infected – 33.5 per cent of our population – not Sage’s 7 per cent calculation.
- Not every infected individual produces antibodies.
- The human immune system has several lines of defence:
- Innate immunity which is comprised of the body’s physical barriers to infection and protective secretions (the skin and its oils, the cough reflex, tears etc);
- Inflammatory response (to localise and minimise infection and injury), and the production of non-specific cells (phagocytes) that target an invading virus/bacterium.
- Antibodies that protect against a specific virus or bacterium (and confer immunity) and T-cells (a type of white blood cell) that are also specific.
- T-cells that are crucial in our body’s response to respiratory viruses such as Covid-19.
- World Health Organisation says 750million people have been infected by the virus as of October and almost none have been reinfected.
- Mortality in 2020 so far ranks eighth out of the last 27 years.
- The death rate at present is also normal for the time of year – the number of respiratory deaths is actually low for late October.
- Not only is the virus less dangerous than we are being led to believe, with almost three quarters of the population at no risk of infection.
- I am convinced this so-called second wave of rising infections and, sadly, deaths will fizzle out without overwhelming the NHS.
Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, has gone back to Plan A, reviving his ‘protect the NHS’ message from March and now wears a facemask with those words on it. The Prime Minister is repeating the slogan. It’s deeply controversial with senior doctors who fear that it discourages the sick from seeking help – which might explain the 28,000 excess at-home deaths over the last few months. The NHS is worried about this and has countered with its own advert, urging people to seek medical help. I looked at this in my latest Daily Telegraph column.
The NHS has learned much from the first wave of Covid. PPE equipment, for example, is now in bountiful supply. Basic medical techniques – better use of blood thinners, oxygen therapy, steroids etc – are having a big impact on survival rates. When Boris Johnson went into intensive care, his survival chances were about 50 per cent. Now, they would be closer to 70 per cent. The trajectory this time is nowhere near as daunting – the below graph shows the rise of Covid patients needing critical care. As the data shows, intensive care unit (ICU) usage is 13 per cent of what it was at the end of March. (These figures are from the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre.)
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-likely-is-the-nhs-to-be-overwhelmed-by-covid-
The NHS has ‘significantly less’ beds now than last winter and parts of the system ‘don’t have enough’, a NHS England and Improvement director has admitted.
Even in Manchester, hospitals are faring far better than the headline statistics suggest
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/20/dont-believe-scare-stories-hospitals-running-icu-beds/
The Greater Manchester ‘local lockdown’ and the more extreme economic lockdowns have both failed to control the number of positive tests within the Borough of Bolton, which has inexorably risen.
During the lockdown, Bolton has seen 20,000 fewer GP referrals to hospital when compared to last year, while many others have not accessed vital treatment because they have been too frightened to do so. By taking our current approach to Covid-19, we are creating many other health problems that are leading to pain, suffering and death.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-i-m-resigning-from-the-government
- Hospital cases rose from 2,396 to 3,660 between September 30 and October 7.
- Almost one in five in hospital tested positive seven days or more after admission.
- This implies that they caught coronavirus whilst a patient there.
- The findings suggest Covid-19 hospitalisations caused by community outbreaks may not be growing as fast as some fear.
- As of October 2020, there are >1 million documented deaths with COVID‐19.
- Many early deaths may have been due to suboptimal management, malfunctional health systems, hydroxychloroquine, sending COVID‐19 patients to nursing homes, and nosocomial infections; such deaths are partially avoidable moving forward.
- About 10% of the global population may be infected by October 2020.
- Global infection fatality rate is 0.15‐0.20%
- Global infection fatality rate in those younger than 70 years old is 0.03‐0.04%.
- Targeted, precise management of the pandemic and avoiding past mistakes would help minimize mortality.