Britain’s intensifying winter flu situation is crippling hospitals with patients encountering 50-hour waits as more trusts could declare critical incidents over the coming days.
At least 11 hospitals including in Birmingham, Liverpool, Hampshire and Cornwall have already raised the alarm amid unbearable pressure on their services as the flu outbreak deteriorates and health chiefs warn the NHS is facing ‘exceptionally high demand’.
Patients have been advised to attend A&E alone while some hospitals have restricted visitors amid calls for people to wear surgical masks to limit the spread of viruses amid the ‘quad-demic’ of flu, norovirus, respiratory illness and Covid affecting Brits.
The number of cases is already around double last year’s peak with about 5,000 beds a day taken up by patients contaminated with the virus – and officials expect the situation to worsen as children return to school after the Christmas break.
Patients have endured lengthy waits in A&E before eventually being admitted to wards, while lines of ambulances up to 18 deep have formed outside hospitals as they wait hours to drop off arrivals, leaving them unable to respond to other 999 calls.
Critical incidents have been reported due to ‘exceptionally high demands’ in A&E units, with about 5,000 hospital beds in England occupied by patients with flu.
People have shared stories of long waits, with one woman tweeting a photo of beds at Royal Blackburn Hospital, saying: ‘Patients left out in cold corridors to be gawped at like exhibits in a zoo. No patient dignity and poor patient care. Shameful at best.’
Another wrote: ‘Currently in West Mid. Horrible place to be. My sister went into A&E last week and is now staying on a ward awaiting surgery. Took seven hours to get a bed whilst she was in severe agony. The noise on the ward, even at night, people playing music etc. Pure lack of consideration.’
And a third tweeted: ‘I spent 12 hours at Barnet UTC yesterday to not get any results, kept being pushed to the back of the queue…. can’t get into my doctor’s to get a prescription so I’ll just let my pneumonia get worse and worse until I need to take up a bed in a hospital shall I?
A father called Derek told how his ill daughter had to endure a ‘horrible 30-hour wait in a chair’ in A&E at Warrington Hospital in Cheshire. She arrived at 9 pm last Friday and finally got a bed at about 3 am on Sunday.
It appears that Britain and all of its citizens are at the bottom of the list of priorities our government has set for expenditure. Our administration doesn’t seem to care that the absence of heating payments would undoubtedly lead to more people becoming sick.
The focus of our prime minister and members of parliament is on themselves, not Britain.
Starmer might have taken over from the Tories, but he has lied to the people. Perhaps he thought it was better to be thought a fool, and now he has opened his mouth and removed any doubt!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 