Operations face the ax if Covid hospital admissions increase

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“If the number of Covid cases increases, and it is accompanied by significant staff absence, there will be something to offer and elective surgery with lower priority will be the traditional way forward,” Hobson said.

On New Year’s Eve, 49,921 NHS staff were out of work or isolated due to Covid, according to figures seen by the Sunday Times.

This is more than double the latest figure published by the NHS which showed there were 24,632 Covid-related absences in NHS acute Boxing Day funds.

Mr Hopson stressed that the Trusts will try to protect urgent and high-priority operations due to record numbers in waiting lists, with many cases now in dire need of treatment.

He said it was particularly difficult to predict the course of London, saying that hospital admissions could stabilize and then decline, or could increase rapidly as a result of the mixing of generations at Christmas.

The NHS Trusts have been told to hire retired doctors and volunteers to assist staff with up to 4,000 extra beds at ‘Nightingale rush centres’.

Construction on the facilities begins next week, but some are not expected to be ready until mid-January. More than a dozen hospitals have now banned most visitors in an effort to curb the spread of the virus, with NHS leaders saying on Saturday that hospital administrators had to make “difficult choices”.

Prof Stephen Boyce, the NHS’s national medical director, said the health service is on a “war basis”, where trusts have been asked to locate facilities and shift them to sites that can create up to 4,000 beds, “a speed increase”. Announcing the plans, he said, “We hoped we’d never have to use the original Nightingale, and I hope we’d never have to use these new hubs.”

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