No 10 Wants Us To 'Live With Covid' - But Can The NHS?

Bed blocking, wait times and staff shortages pile on pressure

- Rebecca Thomas

The NHS is under unsustainable pressure as delays to care, soaring demand and a workforce hit by sickness and burnout combine. This is while ministers insist Britain must "live with Covid" and move on from the pandemic as the front line of the health service faces a strain greater than during the last wave of coronavirus.

Figures seen by The Independent indicate that the number of patients stuck in hospital beds, despite being ready to go home, is higher than ever before because of a lack of available care in the community, piling the pressure on to other parts of the system.

A crisis in ambulance services has led to waits as long as two and a half days, while doctors describe patients packed into wards without the resources to take care of them properly. Ambulance leaders have warned that, by summer, services may be so stretched that they are unable to respond to even the most serious emergencies.

Across the country, NHS staff who have gone above and beyond for two years are still facing intolerable pressure, with no let-up in sight. Calls by NHS leaders to reintroduce masks were rejected by ministers. Andrew Goddard, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said that, while Covid patients themselves are not overwhelming the NHS, they have still accounted for a minimum of 3,650 beds over the past nine months a need that had not previously existed.

He said: "The pressures on the system at the moment, I think, are unlike anything we've ever seen before, and that is taking its toll. Not only are people off sick from Covid at the moment, but we're now beginning to see people have issues with burnout and mental health problems. I think everybody is worried that the system is beginning to break. It's been unrelenting for over two years now, and the system was hard-pressed before Covid, and it just feels like something bad is going to happen."