Should we be concerned about increasing hospital admissions?

[GrannyBloomers]

With cases, admissions and deaths rising quite sharply again, I am wondering if people are concerned. I read that current numbers hopsitalised in Scotland with covid are the highest that they have been.

I appreciate that there are other worrying news stories burying this and that people are sick and tired of covid but it seems to me, that we could be heading towards a significant increase in not just cases but impact on the NHS again.

The whole point of restrictions was to keep the NHS functioning and rightly or wrongly I am concerned we could be about to find it even more crippled than it has been. From personal experience there is a little NHS care available - I know people with serious chronic conditions who cannot be care for by the GP and whose hospital clinics have closed due to lack of staff.

If restrictions were brought in to manage the impact of covid on the NHS, we might be ramping towards the fabled summer wave where restrictions are once again required.

Speaking to a local GP (a friend, can't get to see my GP), they're concerned with the rising number of older people becoming very unwell.

Also, a friend's cancer surgery was cancelled last week due to lack of bed capacity, they'll contact her again in two weeks when they 'hope' to be able to reschedule.

I'm concerned for disabled and vulnerable people, yes. But the government never cared about them in the first place.

We should be somewhat concerned, but temper that concern with the knowledge that an increasingly large share of those people were hospitalised for other conditions, which have not been exacerbated by Covid and they just happened to test positive on admission. John Burn-Murdoch's Twitter feed is good on this.

However I will be encouraging all my older relatives to get their second booster asap, because the data does suggest that we're seeing a drop off in vaccine immunity again.

I'm concerned as I still have restrictions placed upon me as a childminder should anyone in my home have symptoms or test positive I have to close my setting. Just this week alone I know more positive cases than I have throughout the pandemic. My DH is vulnerable too so whilst we are being careful where we can we feel like we're having to be super aware that others can do as they please now there are no restrictions and soon there will be no testing.

I work in a hospital and it’s really bad at the moment. We still have to self isolate so there’s a lot of staff shortages which are causing lots of procedures to be cancelled.

No, not concerned.

I don't think anyone outside of the NHS (or people wanting to use it) are concerned that shop has sailed now and people want to live their life normally and the government has sacked it all off too.

But you're right, the hospitals are bad. In my hospital there are full social distancing rules, PCRs every 3 days which pick up a lot of patients, shutting wards down, isolating staff, cancelling operations, stopping admissions and discharges, stopping visitors etc. Basically disrupting patient care. Like every infectious disease in hospital you have to isolate it. Too much and it stops play.

I'm hopeful that this is at least partly caused by the rise in the more transmissible BA.2 strain of omicron. Presumably this should result in a tall but narrow spike of cases. We might already have peaked even.

When you think the majority of the older generation will have waning immunity it isn't surprising. But unless people start dropping dead in the street (and maybe not even then) I don't think people will care.

I think its out of sight out of mind now, unless you work in the NHS or healthcare setting.
Also as its not on the news ive no idea of cases in my local area or hospital admissions.
My employer has scrapped all covid rules now including desk spacing.

The “hospital admissions” figures include those that go to hospital for other reasons and discover, on testing, that they have Covid. They are there “with” Covid not “because of” Covid.

@VanCleefArpels

The “hospital admissions” figures include those that go to hospital for other reasons and discover, on testing, that they have Covid. They are there “with” Covid not “because of” Covid.

Proof of the refusal to engage with this.

@Whichjab

When you think the majority of the older generation will have waning immunity it isn't surprising. But unless people start dropping dead in the street (and maybe not even then) I don't think people will care.

You can't blame them, or squawk that they are stupid and selfish etc. There are far too many other things to be seriously worried about at the moment. In fact I can't think of anything I'm not worried about. All of them are worrying me more than Covid.

@VanCleefArpels

The “hospital admissions” figures include those that go to hospital for other reasons and discover, on testing, that they have Covid. They are there “with” Covid not “because of” Covid.

^This

Also Scotland hospital admissions are nowhere near highest they've been-not sure where on earth someone got that from.

@VanCleefArpels

The “hospital admissions” figures include those that go to hospital for other reasons and discover, on testing, that they have Covid. They are there “with” Covid not “because of” Covid.

Whilst this matters on a sickness / death numbers level, it doesn't really matter for the impact on hospitals running their services.

It's the finding room to isolate covid patients, shutting wards while the infection runs through, staff getting infecting and self isolating, inability to admit or discharge from wards, patients ending up on different wards to the speciality they need due to closures - they are all the things that are wrecking our hospitals ability to offer a normal service, it doesn't matter how sick people are. But then this has always been the case with all infectious diseases, there's just too much of covid to manage it.

It's the finding room to isolate covid patients, shutting wards while the infection runs through, staff getting infecting and self isolating, inability to admit or discharge from wards, patients ending up on different wards to the speciality they need due to closures - they are all the things that are wrecking our hospitals ability to offer a normal service, it doesn't matter how sick people are. But then this has always been the case with all infectious diseases, there's just too much of covid to manage it.

Absolutely 100% this. It’s all very well ‘treating it like flu’, but that does mean closing wards with active outbreaks. And there’s way more covid about than there would be flu at the peak of a bad winter. It’s really not manageable in the long term. This week has been barely manageable in the short term. And it’s going to impact any attempt to try and get waiting lists down.

And that’s before you even get onto the issues that having a current covid infection or having had a recent covid infection has on outcomes for other conditions.

Impact on nhs will be minimal next month as asymptomatic testing ends for nhs staff and asymptomatic patients - its the isolations and coincidental infections etc which are causing the most issues,

@Watapalava

Impact on nhs will be minimal next month as asymptomatic testing ends for nhs staff and asymptomatic patients - its the isolations and coincidental infections etc which are causing the most issues,

Has that been announced for definite? I thought it was becoming the trusts responsibility to provide the swabbing rather than the government (which is what happened at the beginning of the pandemic).

It'll take the government announcing it HAS to all stop in hospitals for it to actually stop as no NHS trust will do it willingly as they will be the ones in the firing line when the clinically vulnerable are treated by covid positive staff etc.

It's still a problem for NHS if people are admitted with, rather than because of, covid.

It means we don't need whole swathes of hospitals converted to infectious disease wards.

But hey do still need separate zones so that potentially infectious patients are not put in with vulnerable ones (not just wards, but also things like acting areas inscanninng departments)

So is still extra time and complexity, and probably no change of making serious inroads into the backlog.

Cases are rising fast - weekly rolling positive tests are up 56.3% (458 per 100k - a week or so ago it was 347)

Hospital admissions up 16.9%
Deaths up 2.8%

Even if it were to happen, I’m not sure that less testing is going to be answer to reducing the disruption caused by transmission within the hospital and patients with Covid.

If you think that the nhs will have minimal disruption next month by just ignoring covid, you are living in a fantasy world and have very little idea of exactly how covid causes problems in a hospital system.

It says online no tests at all for nhs staff and only for a very small group of at risk symptomatic individuals

That’s not the message we’re getting. It’s that twice weekly testing will continue after 1st April.

The government/Boris can make whatever pronouncements they like. It isn’t going to stop infection control teams doing the best they can for the patients in their care. Especially since my understanding was that public health advice was that testing should continue in hospitals. It was the government that are insisting that hospitals shouldn’t be following public health advice.

We had a rather ominous text from our doctors today saying local a and e are swamped only go if critical

Of all the things I'm currently worried about, covid doesnt even make the top 10 🤷🏻‍♀️

I was reading about the old fever / isolation hospitals earlier on.

Obviously they all closed down years ago but it made me think.

@Watapalava

Impact on nhs will be minimal next month as asymptomatic testing ends for nhs staff and asymptomatic patients - its the isolations and coincidental infections etc which are causing the most issues,

This is simply not the case

Pretty sobering summary from an NHS doctor here:

twitter.com/danielgoyal/status/1494420844537393160?s=21