London Hospital declares Major Incident.

[RubyViolet]

This is frightening, and it’s not the hospital that l have heard about earlier today. This is in South London and l am hearing about a hospital in North London.
www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-london-queen-elizabeth-hospital-oxygen-b1779468.html

What happens next ?

@BiggerTallerFaster

Things are undoubtedly tough out there, but all big hospitals declare major incidents at surprisingly frequent intervals in usual times. It's so frequent it's not normally news.

That’s cos they don’t normally run out of oxygen.

Declaring critical incidents because of bed pressures might well be normal and there are well established winter pressure procedures in hospitals to deal with that and reduce the pressure.

Declaring critical incident because you have so many patients on high flow oxygen is NOT normal and is trickier to deal with however much some MNers like to pretend it’s all fine.

What is the point of this thread?
to raise awareness so that the gvt can be held to account

@fassbendersmistress

I’ve heard from a friend this eve (she works in a job with access to such info) that Ldn will go into T5 in a matter of days. 8pm curfew and leaving home to exercise will not be allowed, apparently. Grim few weeks ahead if it is true.

Why don’t people with access to information know to keep it from friends who post it on SM?

I’ve heard from a friend this eve (she works in a job with access to such info) that Ldn will go into T5 in a matter of days. 8pm curfew and leaving home to exercise will not be allowed, apparently. Grim few weeks ahead if it is true

What a load of old bollocks.

[quote Frdexu]@fassbendersmistress

That's great news if true- finally the government listening to the science rather than the far-right prioritisation of the economy over saving lives.

Frankly the whole country should be in tier 5 with no one slower to leave home at all unless a key worker. But it's a start.[/quote]
Far right what a laugh

Do you work?

@chandlerbong

No, not every one does pay for it.

A small proportion pay for it for everyone else so don’t kid yourself.

Things are pretty bad in London hospitals right now. I have heard first hand from a paediatrics consultant who is working lots of extra shifts to cover staff covid absences that lots of paediatric patients testing postive now (unlike in first wave) - this has a huge knock in effect for how they can run the wards.
Similarly a very sad story about the death from covid of a midwife in a North London hospital - again they are seeing huge increases in postive cases in Covid in pregnancy women (again unlike the first wave.)

Our health services are literally being brought to their knees, the human moral cost of this pandemic is huge. Really tough times ahead.

Shame on the people flooding to the sales, I love a good sale but not in the middle of a pandemic.

I hope the people who have had various relatives/friends over Xmas think now that maybe they shouldn’t have done it or will they be screaming for ventilation and pushing their way to the front.

Having said that the media and some people on MN love a good drama. The NHS are always like this every single winter.

The last time - probably 10 years ago I was in A and E and it seemed like a day out for families to come out en masse. We had to sit on the floor because one family had 6 people who decided to come for one cut finger.

they had the same issue at Northwick Park Hospital back in the spring.

I've worked in resp med. It wont just be covid patients!!! Its flu season, copd patients struggle in winter as so asthma patients. It's the busy period. Alongside it been drop a granny at a and e as well!!!

You could argue that “the people” have a right to know or you could say you are just scaremongering. People are already frightened, why exacerbate it?

If you are going to follow the rules anyway, threads such as these are irrelevant. If you are not, then they probably make no difference.

I am living as normal a life as I can, within the tier 3 restrictions. If I catch COVID, I will deal with it then and if it kills me (unlikely) the so be it. If I am hospitalised (unlikely), ditto.

I honestly don’t see the point in being frightened.

When the Government threatened Greenwich and Islington Council with legal action for wanting to shut the school early for Christmas l did wonder if we were not getting the full picture.
Now l wonder if they couldn’t be held accountable if anyone dies through lack of care/ beds in those areas.

Yes, it's happened before. It's happened to most major hospitals at some point over the winter months over the years.

What is different here, is that covid cases are rising. They're not just rising, they're rising quickly, and it's continuing to rise, as are hospital admissions.
Also this is one hospital. With cases rising the way they are all over the country, we may find hospital after hospital calling the same.
When before we've had it, it's often been individual hospitals with a localised increase, which isn't expected to spill into other areas, so diversion is a possibility.

It's one thing to think "oh well" when it's one hospital which is nowhere near you.
It'll be a different matter when you need to call 999 and you know that all the local hospitals are in that situation.

Have you ever called 999 and got the message "please call back because our lines are all busy"? I have. It's terrifying when you have someone who is losing consciousness with probably a stroke. You feel totally powerless to help.
Then when we eventually got through (3rd call) we were told we were on urgent response and the approximate wait time was 2.5 hours, because the ambulances were all out.

Hopefully tier 4 was called in time to bring down the cases, or at least stabilise them, but we don't know yet. Cases are rising, 41k today, likely to stay at that level or increase for the next few days as the Christmas backlog comes in.

This is what lockdown prevented in the first wave.

Stay safe, folk, wherever you are.

I’ve been past excel nightingale and there is definitely activity. I saw 5 unmanned parked ambulances outside it last week.
They’ve also put the signs back up on one of the service roads and I think they have a test centre outside, initially I thought it was for filming due to the vans used, but now I’m not sure.

DHs hospital were lucky enough to foresee this was a potential problem before they had their initial wave (our region was quite late to the original wave) so used the time to upgrade the Oxygen pipework to parts of the hospital. They pulled out all the stops to ensure they got the building work sorted in weeks rather than the usual years. They were also lucky to have a site which allowed for this fairly easily other sites would be more difficult.
They were so lucky they had that initial breathing space and could see what was heading to them from other regions.

For disclosure, l am in Central London with a husband who has under treatment for Cancer at a large North London Hospital. He is out of the woods now l think ( touch wood, cross fingers, ) but this situation scares me should he need more care.
His observations/ scans have been less frequent than they should (every 3 months’ )and we haven’t seen a Consultant since February, it’s all done on the phone.
So this does impact my life.

The Nightingale Hospitals’ referral criteria included patients who had single organ failure, not multiple organ failure (Covid results in the latter in most cases) because they didn’t have the staff to cope with multi organ. They were therefore hopelessly under utilised due to being under staffed.

Does anyone know which north London hospital is involved this time? (I work in S London but live in N so I have a personal and professional interest!)

2 weeks ago I had to call an ambulance for DH whose oxygen level was at 88%, It took 4 hours for an ambulance to arrive, and we knew it would take that long but it was still an anxious time. He was taken to hospital, diagnosed wit h non-Covid related pneunonia and given iv antibiotics and oxygen but discharged within 4 hours. Thank goodness there was oxygen for him but under normal circumstances he would also have been admitted. It's scary to know that people are not receiving optimum treatment for other conditions because of the current situation and incredibly frustrating to listen to people banging on about having their freedom and rights to go to restaurants or to get their fucking nails done curtailed when people's lives are at stake.

@RubyViolet

When the Government threatened Greenwich and Islington Council with legal action for wanting to shut the school early for Christmas l did wonder if we were not getting the full picture. Now l wonder if they couldn’t be held accountable if anyone dies through lack of care/ beds in those areas.

Half the issue is people aren’t dying from it . They are staying alive and simply needing more oxygen than hospitals can supply.

@Anotherpointofview1

Major incidents happen every year. In some hospitals it happens multiple times, during the winter aka respiratory season. The memory holing of this is one of the most ridiculous aspects of this whole covid hysteria.

This.

In real life I'm as concerned about Covid as the next person, but the bilge on here makes me act like a Covid denier.

Major incidents are often called during the winter yes.
But generally because of capacity issues in A&E with elderly people lying on trollies for hours, or wards having to be shut because of outbreaks of Norovirus. Or majjor staff shortages due to unprecedented sick levels.
They are rarely declared because hospitals are running out of fucking oxygen supplies for people in ARDS. The lengths that some of you will go to, to deny what is actually happening, is sickening.

I think you need to manage your expectations of mumsnet...its an open discussion forum for adults with their own kinds, subject to speculation and unverified facts. What I have stated reflects the direction all media is reporting in, in recent days. Hardly groundbreaking news.

It's very worrying especially considering there was another 40k cases today and hospital admissions usually take a while to catch up