What is the situation in London?

[notevenat20]

I read about the covid situation in London and it sounds bad. I see the graphs of case numbers and it looks terrible. But my doctor friend who was called up in lockdown 1 and is ready to be called again has heard nothing this time round. It seems they are not running out of capacity at all.

Why is this and what is the real situation?

I knew one person in March who had covid, but now I know loads. Lots of our secondary schools were forced to go online in the last week and primary bubbles were closing too.

Well there were 680+ positive tests in Greenwich secondary school pupils in the last week of term...

My kids primary was fine till last week when it kicked off. Lots of positive tests at my work and my husband’s work. We know loads of people who have it now or who are isolating. Thankfully no one in hospital. But it is definitely everywhere.

BBC London evening news reported that hospitals are at 2/3 of the levels they were at in March at the peak. I assume levels will vary from hospital to hospital. But cases doubled in a week, and there is always a lag between new cases and hospital admissions. Also flu season doesn't really start until January, and the weather has been really mild so far.

Flu might be down this year because of social distancing and masks.

This is my area. Huge increase. The curve is aLmost vertical

We are inundated with patients, some got ill after their Christmas shopping and others are party goers in 50s and 60s. Surgical and outpatient staff are expected to cover sickness. ITU is at maximum!
I had my first dose of vaccine today.
Keeping my fingers crossed for lower mortality rates 🤞

I’m at a hospital in southeast London, it’s getting bad again, non-life threatening surgery has been stopped, ICU is full (our HDU is for non-COVID patients but who knows how long that can continue for), trying to get people out ASAP as queuing ambulances.

One big issue is that whilst my admissions ward isn’t a COVID ward, people keep testing positive (don’t ask why Drs say unlikely COVID when someone comes in with chest infection symptoms), so we then have to isolate the bay, those patients end up catching COVID and we can’t move patients around easily. One patient was exposed, we couldn’t send them home to continue being a carer for their partner as they may have passed it on. Also when you have an isolation bay, you can’t put COVID positive patients in there in case the other patients haven’t contracted it, but you can’t put negative COVID people in there either in case the exposed patients have caught it.

We are also creating more COVID wards as admissions increase.

I think it depends on which area of London you are in. Ours is one of the most affected so I know lots of people who’ve tested positive. And the schools are constantly closing classes down.

But most areas are still less affected than Tier 2 parts of the country (I think ... maybe Tier 3)

Was fine until mid December then it’s kicked off in all the primary schools, and some secondary (I don’t have kids of that age, so know less about them). I now personally know : 2 neighbours, 2 teachers; 1 work colleague & 2 friends that have tested positive. Plus the cases in the school (14) which I know about via the school. I knew 1 over the first lockdown.

I consider the situation to be approaching dire.

I work in a zone 1 hospital. Our numbers are building slowly. The weekend was apparently horrendous in ED (I don't work there).

I've heard of three London hospitals not mentioned on this thread already who have cancelled elective surgical workload.

The staff who can rapidly upskill to ITU are generally the staff who work in operating theatres. The pressure to deliver elective care, catch up on the backlog from lockdown 1, increasing staff self isolation rates and Christmas break is a potent pressure cooker for staff who were already under a huge amount of pressure.

Listening to the staff who got redeployed to ITUs experiences and the psychological fall out is really difficult. Many are still struggling with PTSD type symptoms.

My staff group have already been asked to cover an additional on call tier over all the bank holidays & weekends. It's really crap - we have been working so hard delivering masses of extra elective operating lists to try to get on top of the enormous surgical waiting lists and most people badly need a break.

I run COvid Messenger. I pull in the data published daily by the govt and collate it into a simple, easy to read table of data for each council.

If you look at the table on the homepage www.covidmessenger.com and click the county column and then scan down to London, you can very quickly see the change week-over-week in every council in London.

Unfortunately its similar to where I am (Kent). Nearly every council has recorded a doubling of cases week-over-week from already high levels.

On the bright side, I do feel there are some elements which will hopefully help qwell cases under control, in particular the fact that we have restrictions in place in conjunction with no school interactions. It's almost like an unofficial circuit breaker.

So fingers crossed cases will stop the relentless march upwards over the holidays.

That said, how the return to school can be managed without skyrocketing cases is beyond me. Perhaps routine testing of children or similar.

I'm a teacher in London and I think we are up to 20+ staff who have had it now and over 50 children. Nobody hospitalised so far thank goodness. It is spreading like wildfire in the schools

lighlypoached
That graph is alarming. You've had 19% of your total number of cases since March in just the last week. It doesn't account for those not tested at the start of the pandemic but still....

East London Hospital. We are currently overwhelmed with COVID. Every ward has COVID patients, ED full to the brim, ITU doubled in capacity and also full. Running out of staff, supplies, ways to deliver oxygen to our sickest patients.

One of the scariest things about the second wave is that unlike last time the hospital still has lots of non-COVID patients too and with the levels so high they are at huge risk of contracting COVID while they are inpatients (or outpatients).

Worse than the first wave as staff are so exhausted and this time there is no clapping, no free food and no sign of mass vaccination yet.

Oh and we cancelled all elective surgery last week and are likely to start cancelling cancer surgery now which is a sign that the shit has truly hit the fan.

DS was at a school camp last week and we received an email yesterday about a child who tested positive.
I drove back home into London today via M40 and A40 and it was gridlocked with traffic around 6.40pm. I didn’t see this during the first lockdown. Traffic flow seems normal from Oxford into London.

There is currently a surge here in Harrow NW London We had a high number of deaths earlier in the year with hospitals full and temporary mortuarys put up. We just hope these new infections stabilise now that schools are off and tier 4 restrictions are in place.

I'm in East London.

I don't know anyone who has had it but I'm enjoying the quiet (i live by a usually busy road).

Was fine until mid December then it’s kicked off in all the primary schools, and some secondary

Same here, SE London. I run a large charity project with dozens of volunteers and schools, and have my own toddler in nursery. Literally no cases among volunteers, schools or nursery March through December, now two large schools shut early for lack of staff and 25% of volunteers self-isolating or testing positive.

@Milomonster

I believe there was an accident . I live in that area and it was reported on local groups

I'm also in SE London: could count on one hand the number of people I knew who had had COVID from March until late November: I'm aware of about a dozen people who have tested positive since then.

That said, all of the people I know (of) have had very mild or asymptomatic cases and all are now recovered.

@tinybitsoflego

East London Hospital. We are currently overwhelmed with COVID. Every ward has COVID patients, ED full to the brim, ITU doubled in capacity and also full. Running out of staff, supplies, ways to deliver oxygen to our sickest patients.

One of the scariest things about the second wave is that unlike last time the hospital still has lots of non-COVID patients too and with the levels so high they are at huge risk of contracting COVID while they are inpatients (or outpatients).

Worse than the first wave as staff are so exhausted and this time there is no clapping, no free food and no sign of mass vaccination yet.

Are you at Whipps Cross by any chance?

I'm based in north London. I have friends working in hospitals who were advising people to keep household mixing to a minimum ahead of the tier 4 restriction announcement as they could see the hospitals getting busy with covid. I also have friend with family in hospital for other reasons and have heard that they have a lot of nurses covering from other hospitals as so many people have gone off sick or to isolate.

One statistic that hit me this week.... uk population is around 66million, we have had so far around 68k deaths... that in deaths not even cases is more than 1 in 1000 people in the UK have died linked to covid.... so so scary!

I think it depends where you are. Last I heard from medical friends, hospitals in N london v busy, but others not.