NHS operations could be affected by coronavirus until middle of this decade, Royal College of Surgeons president warns

NHS operations could be affected by coronavirus until the middle of this decade, the president of the Royal College of Surgeons has warned.

Professor Derek Alderson told MPs the longer it takes to restart scheduled surgical services "the worse this situation is going to get".

He told the Commons Health and Social Care Select Committee that the government should designate a series of "Covid-light" sites, where surgery patients would have a low risk of catching the virus.

And he warned it was essential that the NHS retained access to private hospitals to use their facilities.

But he cautioned that the idea the NHS could catch up on the backlog in surgery within a matter of weeks was "completely unrealistic".

Instead, he suggested that the NHS could still be dealing with the effects of the coronavirus crisis on operations in four or five years.

He warned extra precautions would have to be taken before surgeons could be confident they were providing surgery safely.

“So, even if we can get going again, I think it's slightly unrealistic to believe that we can get going at full speed very quickly,” he said.

He added: “It may take us a few years to catch up, and, as I say, we have to be able to sustain that effort.

"So we really do need a programme (for the) recovery of surgery, and the sustainability of surgery, that probably looks at four or five years, in order to have a resilient system and take things forward in the best possible way."

He also called for the NHS to be able to access the Nightingale units, the emergency NHS hospitals set up across the country earlier this year, in the event of a “worst-case scenario” second wave later this year.

In the wake of the lockdown there are now an estimated 8 million people on NHS waiting lists, including for non-surgical treatment.

There are predictions that figure could rise to ten million later this year, Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary and chair of the committee, told MPs.

Health leaders have called for the public to be warned of the size of soaring waiting lists, caused in part by the focus on the fight against the global pandemic.

Patients should not expect the same standard of service from the NHS as they had before the coronavirus crisis, NHS Confederation, which represents over 500 healthcare organisations, has warned.

NHS hospitals have also been told to maximise their use of private sector hospitals for cancer surgery, and to diagnose patients with suspected cancer, in an effort to tackle the growing backlog.