How the NHS has coped with the second wave

Across Europe, hospitals have been filling up again with the second wave of coronavirus. France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands have all been hit, as has the Midwest of the United States. In England we’ve gone from fewer than 500 Covid-positive patients in hospital at the start of September to nearly 15,000 now. Each morning, we anxiously scrutinise the overnight figures. Thankfully, in the past week Covid inpatient numbers have begun to plateau — although they’ve still been rising in parts of the Midlands, London and Kent. So it’s an uneven picture. But unlike in March, community testing gives hospitals advance warning, so we’re able to adjust the provision of local health services almost in real time. This minimises the knock-on effect on other services. So NHS hospitals are now caring for 20,000 more non-Covid emergency inpatients each day than when they last had 15,000 Covid patients. Compared with spring they’re also performing three times more routine operations, and cancer treatments and GP appointments are mostly back to usual levels.