Analysis: A virulent new strain of Covid-19 will mean more patients and sick staff for a battered NHS

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Faced with a new strain of coronavirus spreading rapidly through London and the southeast, with many hospitals already declaring major incidents and cancelling operations, the prime minister had little choice but to act.

The new variant of Covid-19 now appears to present a very real threat to the NHS, public health and, ultimately, lives.

Experts on the government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) have looked at the data and the genetic sequencing of positive cases picked up across the south of England, and have come to a sobering conclusion.

The change in the virus has somehow made it easier to transmit between people, and it could be responsible for as much as 70 per cent of the new infections.

Viral mutations are nothing new and are to be expected. The chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, has said there is currently no suggestion that the new variant is more deadly or that vaccines will be of no use. We await the detailed findings and analysis.

But the situation in London has deteriorated quickly. In a matter of days the capital has seen cases spike and admissions to hospital rise substantially every day.

The very latest NHS England data for Saturday shows that 16 per cent of the capital’s acute hospital beds are occupied by Covid patients, a total of 2,599 compared with just 1,867 a week ago – a rise of nearly 40 per cent.

On Thursday night, NHS England bosses said the capital could run out of beds within weeks.

One of the major threats to the NHS is not beds but a shortage of staff – a virulent new strain will deliver a double whammy to the health service. More sick patients will need help, while more staff will fall ill or be forced to self-isolate.

One of the reasons the Nightingale hospitals are not being used is because staff cannot be spared to run them; better to cancel operations and create makeshift intensive care units manned by redeployed workers. These actions are being taken right across southern England.

The NHS experiences a winter crisis most years so the addition of thousands of seriously ill coronavirus patients and the effect it will have on trying to maintain routine services for other sick patients is catastrophic.

Staffing ratios of nurses to patients are being stretched to previously unthinkable levels. Patients will have their surgery cancelled and staff will be asked to confront a challenge the likes of which the NHS has never seen.

The coronavirus has meant overall bed capacity has had to be cut and it has seen tens of thousands of staff forced off sick either through infection or isolation, making it even harder to keep services running.

There will be consequences for patient care, for health workers and for the country.

Faced with such obvious threats, the government has acted correctly in curtailing the movement of people from the southeast of England and restricting Christmas gatherings to just one day. Anything else would have been a dangerous dereliction of its responsibility to protect its citizens’ lives.

Senior health figures and both the British Medical Journal and the Health Service Journal warned that the five-day Christmas relaxation would be deadly.

Boris Johnson has done the right thing, in the end, but only when the virus once again had him backed into a corner.