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Talked to a few doctors on #covid19 frontline this evening about excess beds/capacity issues the govt spoke about today
Widely observed that far fewer people with other medical conditions are coming into hospital. One doctor told me on their ward they& #39;re having 30-40 covid admissions in 24hrs and only 6 with other problems
To some extent this is older people who would have developed other issues getting covid instead but that doesn& #39;t account for all of it. Widespread assumption among medical staff is that people are too scared to go to hospital which could cause a lot of problems down the line
As a result, regards to capacity, yes there& #39;s plenty of beds on normal wards but still strain on ICU. One doctor I spoke to say they would typically have 34 ICU beds, that& #39;s been upgraded to 90, with 95% intubated with covid.
Doctors keen to point out there& #39;s an important distinct to be drawn between absolute loss of control due to surge capacity being overwhelmed (a la Lombardy) and "sub-optimal care we have to give because things are stretched"
