As Covid threatens to cause a summer of chaos, all ambulance trusts in England were placed on the highest alert today, and headteachers issued a warning that there may be significant disruptions in schools.
The heatwave, increasing Covid staff absences, and persistent delays in getting patients to A&E have put additional strain on ambulance services, which were already operating in crisis mode.
The Resource Escalation Action Plan (REAP) 4 level four alert, which denotes that all 10 trusts are under “severe pressure,” has been activated.
Patients with situations that are not life-threatening may be advised to find their own way to the hospital or find alternate care as a result of this, or they may experience even longer wait times than usual.
Teachers have noted that the proportion of students absent due to illness is “very worrying” for this time of year, with up to one in five students absent in England last week.
The data shows the highest level of absenteeism among students since January, at the height of the Omicron wave that paralyzed large portions of the economy.
It occurs during the fifth wave of COVID-19 infections in Britain, with an estimated 2.7 million (one in 24) people getting sick in the most recent week.
Daily Covid hospital admissions have increased to a nearly 18-month high as a result of the emergence of two mild but highly contagious Omicron substrains, with almost 2,000 patients being admitted with the virus each day.
However, only a small portion of these are mainly infected with the virus.
The REAP 4 notice indicates that trusts are giving patients whose situations are urgent and immediately lethal priority.
People with less serious ailments are urged to seek alternate care or to expect a delayed response.
In the lowest tier of callouts, the South Central Ambulance Service Trust has specifically requested that individuals seek out “alternative treatment and guidance” and refrain from calling 999 to inquire about an expected arrival time unless the patient’s condition has altered.
The 999 call volume was increasing, the service reported, and patients were calling back to complain about delayed responses.
The West Midlands Ambulance Service, meanwhile, claimed to have been on the highest level of alert in recent months and told HSJ that yesterday, more than half of its ambulance crews were backed up outside hospitals.
One ambulance crew reportedly had to wait 24 hours to transfer a patient, according to a trust representative.
The situation was “dire” for both personnel and patients, according to a senior authority in the north of the country who begged to remain anonymous.
Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, declared that the ambulance service was in “crisis.”
Patients are left unattended for a lot longer than is safe, and as a result, he claimed, lives are being lost.
The current state of affairs is similar to the Omicron wave peak in January, when all ambulance services were likewise on high alert.
A patient with a life-threatening condition, such as a cardiac or respiratory arrest, who may be unconscious or on the verge of passing out, and requires an emergency ambulance response, would be a category one 999 call.
Serious conditions requiring quick assessment and/or immediate transport, such as a stroke, chest discomfort, sepsis, or severe burns, would fall under category two calls.
Category three calls are defined as an urgent condition, such as an uncomplicated diabetic problem that requires care and transportation to an acute setting.
A category four call is a non-urgent issue when the patient has to be transported to the hospital but is clinically stable.
Ambulance response times reached their greatest levels on record in March as a result of the pandemic’s toll on emergency services.
Even though the Covid-caused backlog has continued to grow, A&E and ambulance response times have actually somewhat improved.
Under May, more than 19,000 patients at casualty units were still required to wait 12 hours or longer before receiving a bed, in what experts called “inhumane” circumstances.
This was a 5% decrease from the previous month, however emergency medical professionals claim that NHS England data grossly understate the severity of the situation.
The typical category one response time for the previous month was eight minutes and 36 seconds.
This is 96 seconds slower than the seven-minute goal but 26 seconds faster than April.
Category two calls, such as burns, epilepsy, and strokes, required an ambulance to get on the scene on average in May in 39 minutes and 58 seconds.
This is more than double the 18-minute aim yet 11 minutes and 24 seconds faster than one month ago.
Response times for category three calls, which include diabetes, non-severe burns, and late stages of labor, were typically two hours, nine minutes, and 32 seconds.
is less than the April average of two hours, 38 minutes, and 41 seconds. Nine out of ten category three calls should receive an ambulance response within two hours.
Education officials estimate that 42,000 teachers and school administrators missed last Thursday’s class (approximately 8% of the workforce; up from 33,000 on June 23) and 49,000 support workers (6.8% of all support staff nationwide; up from 5.5% (39,000) on June 23.
According to the most recent government statistics, which were made public on Tuesday, overall attendance in state schools decreased to 86.9% on July 7 from 89.4% on June 23 when Year 11 and 13 pupils who were taking examinations were excluded.
Just 81.2% of secondary school students were present, down from 86.9% on June 23, meaning that nearly one in five students were not in class.
The numbers are “very alarming,” according to Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders.
It is impossible to determine how many of these absences are specifically related to Covid because the government has decided to stop collecting this data, he said.
But given the increased infection rates in society, it is very likely that COVID-19 is contributing significantly to these alarming numbers.
He claimed that the Government was now “even more distracted by its own internal politics” after “already appearing to have washed its hands of responsibility” for increased COVID-19 rates.
Children and staff members continue to get sick, frequently more than once, and instructional disruptions continue.
Especially as we enter the colder months once more in the autumn term, we just cannot allow this pattern to keep occurring. The administration needs to refocus on the pandemic’s ongoing issues and develop a plan to lessen this continuous disruption.
“This reflects what we have been hearing from our members,” said Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT, the organization for school administrators.
Covid has unquestionably not disappeared, and in fact, new reports indicate that cases have risen once more, in keeping with trends observed nationally.
Even though the summer break is only around the corner, people are already concerned about the next fall and winter. The government cannot simply leave schools to handle COVID-19 on their own.
Better than that is required and deserved by learners.
We require a comprehensive strategy for dealing with it over the long term that is concentrated on maintaining low levels and minimizing disturbance.
The high rates are “creating more disruption to students’ education as they strive to catch up on lost learning before the conclusion of the academic year,” Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said.
He continued by saying that Covid recovery money had never even “gone near” to the levels suggested by Sir Kevan Collins, the recovery tsar, and that given the present infection rates, students ran the risk of falling further behind before the summer break.
He claimed that government initiatives to increase ventilation in schools “remain miserably inadequate.”
The current COVID-19 wave is happening in the middle of the summer, when the windows of the classrooms are open and the absence rate is still high.
Unless the DfE gets its act together and properly provides sufficient ventilation in all classrooms, the transmission and disease levels are likely to be significantly worse if the next COVID-19 wave arrives in the winter.
The Omicron sub-strains BA.4 and BA.5, with the latter being the virus’s most contagious version to yet, are what are causing Britain’s fifth wave.
Since the strains first emerged, infections have been on the rise in Britain for the past five weeks, with 2.7 million (one in 24) people believed to have contracted the disease last week.
Additionally, they have led to a daily increase in Covid hospital admissions of nearly 18 months, with about 2,000 patients being admitted with the virus each day.
However, BA.4 and BA.5 are both as mild as their parent strain, thus even though cases have been increasing for weeks, ICU admissions and deaths have stayed constant.
Additionally, two-thirds of Covid NHS patients are not predominantly ill with the virus, suggesting that increased admissions are more of a sign of high infection rates than very serious illness.
Most cases are referred to as “incidental” cases because they include people who were admitted to the hospital for another reason but ended up testing positive.
The number of Covid ICU patients is now 20 times lower than it was in January 2021, when the second wave of infections peaked, and it is lower than it has ever been.
Only 218 people with the virus are currently using mechanical ventilators in England; this is an increase of roughly 100 patients from one month ago.
For instance, at the height of the second wave in January 2021, there were 3,600 people on ventilators.
According to different Office for National Statistics data, Covid is the primary cause of death for only 25 persons every day.
Last January, there were 1,300 deaths each day, with the virus being primarily to blame for the vast majority.
A combination of increasing natural immunity, vaccinations, and the milder strains that are currently in the majority contribute to Covid’s shifting severity.