Leaked email: ‘ICUs in London overcrowded, seriously ill in queue’ | Abroad

These are North Middlesex University Hospital, Barnet Hospital and Whittington Hospital. There, some critically ill patients had to wait until they could be transferred to another location. Another hospital in London, the Royal Free, is said to treat 58 IC patients, while there are normally only 34 IC beds.

An NHS spokesperson stressed that everything is being done to ensure that more seriously ill patients can be treated. He also called it “crucial that the public do everything possible to stop transmission of the virus.” The British capital is already in lockdown and the government decided on Friday to keep primary schools in London closed. Emergency hospitals are also being reopened.

A new corona variant has been identified in the UK, which appears to be much more contagious. The head of the medical organization Royal College of Physicians warned the BBC that this variant is spreading across the country. According to Professor Andrew Goddard, this has already led to increased pressure on hospitals in the South East, London and South Wales. Medical institutions in other parts of the country are also affected, he says.

Hospital bosses have already warned that the NHS is facing grueling weeks. This is partly due to the new corona variant. This is said to be especially common in London and further spread could increase the pressure on hospitals even more.

Reproduction number

New research shows that this new variant can indeed spread much faster. It could increase the so-called reproduction number by a factor of 0.4 to 0.7. That R number indicates how quickly the virus spreads. It has recently been estimated in the UK at 1.1 to 1.3. That means that every ten infected people transmit the virus to eleven to thirteen others.

A researcher from Imperial College London called the difference between the virus variants “quite extreme.” Professor Axel Gandy spoke to the BBC about the most serious change to the virus since the start of the pandemic. “There is a huge difference in how easily the virus variant can spread.”

The UK started vaccinating citizens last month with the vaccine from the companies Pfizer and BioNtech, which was later also approved in the EU. The British regulator has now also given the green light for the use of a second corona vaccine. That was developed by Oxford University and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.

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