Hospitals in Wales are almost full due to a surge in coronavirus patients, while health trusts in Northern Ireland have warned the wards risk being ‘overwhelmed’ within weeks.

The Welsh NHS Confederation said more hospitals around the country could soon suspend non-urgent care after two health boards were forced into doing so.

The warning came as Welsh health minister Vaughan Gething confirmed more than 14,000 Covid cases had been recorded in the last week.

Meanwhile in Northern Ireland, health trusts said several acute hospitals are already operating beyond capacity, with the flow of patients ‘seriously impacted’ by pandemic restrictions.

‘Add pre-existing staffing pressures and staff absence due to Covid-19 infection, or the need to self-isolate, and there is a very real risk that hospitals will be overwhelmed in the event of a further Covid-19 spike in January,’ the health chiefs warned.

‘We are not making this point lightly and as a result, we are appealing to the public to be extremely cautious over the festive period and to take all necessary precautions to stop the virus spreading.’

A circuit-breaker lockdown which closed non-essential retailers and hospitality venues ended in Northern Ireland last week.

First Minister Arlene Foster said they will discuss further Covid restrictions before the new year as she accepted ‘the numbers are not where we’d like them to be’.

On Monday, Swansea Bay University Health Board said it was postponing some non-urgent surgery at Neath Port Talbot Hospital and all non-essential face-to-face appointments at all its sites to free up beds in response to Covid-19 pressures.

Figures show Neath Port Talbot’s latest seven-day case rate is 722.2 per 100,000 of the population, second only to Merthyr Tydfil’s 822.2.

Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, which covers Newport and Caerphilly, two areas in the top six of Wales’s worst case rate areas, postponed all non-urgent care on Saturday because of Covid pressures.

One of the health board’s intensive care consultants, Ami Jones, said on Monday that Wales should go into lockdown now and ‘write Christmas off’ to save lives.

She told ITV Wales: ‘There’s quite a lot of us who feel like they would rather – as unpopular as it is – have a lockdown now.

‘I really worry about Christmas. I really worry about people taking those risks because they want to see family and the implications of all those new bubbles of people mixing and the increase in numbers it will cause.

‘We need to do something. I think a lot of us would rather it happen now and we just write Christmas off but I get that it would be massively unpopular.’

At Monday’s Welsh Government press briefing, Mr Gething said preventing the NHS in Wales from becoming overwhelmed was ‘in the hands of each and every one of us’ ahead of the planned easing of restrictions over Christmas.

He said it was not the Welsh Government’s preference to change the easing of restrictions between December 23 and 27, but added: ‘If the virus continues to grow, then we’ll need to make choices to keep people safe.’

The four UK nations have jointly agreed a five-day relaxation of rules to allow up to three different households across the country to mix with each other.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].

For more stories like this, check our news page.

Source: Read Full Article