Reduction in NHS beds to control innfection

 

Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much bed capacity has been reduced by to improve infection control in hospitals in England during the covid-19 outbreak. (156227)

Tabled on: 22 February 2021

Answer:
Edward Argar:

The latest data shows that the average daily number of beds open overnight in Quarter 3 2020/21 was 121,524 compared to 128,326 in Quarter 3 2019/20.

Hospitals continue to flex their bed capacity as part of planning to meet the demand from both elective and emergency streams. We are working hard with trusts to maximise the number of open beds while maintaining safe care through the pandemic.

The answer was submitted on 02 Mar 2021 at 12:35.

32 Comments

  1. Hope
    March 2, 2021

    The more pertinent questions might be:

    Why are hospitals the focal point for spreading this deadly virus after a year?

    The hospitals continue to be centres of spreading serious infection even after it was known infected elderly people were sent to care homes causing a huge amount of deaths. Why have you allowed this to continue?

    Before the virus hospital infections were rife, so what has the govt done to address the practices of hospital death centres?

    1. SM
      March 2, 2021

      Oddly enough, when you necessarily put a lot of infected people into a building (called a hospital) containing other vulnerable people, infections spread – if you can come up with a better system of caring for the sick, I’m all ears, and I expect the medical profession would be too.

      1. Sir Joe Soap
        March 2, 2021

        No that should be corrected to “when you necessarily put a lot of NON-infected people into a building (called a hospital) containing other vulnerable people, infections spread” BUT THEY WOULDN’T IF THE INFECTED PEOPLE WERE PUT IN SPECIALIST ISOLATED AREAS. NIGHTINGALE RING ANY BELLS?

        1. SM
          March 2, 2021

          How many Nightingale hospitals were erected? One in every Borough or City – I don’t think so.

          Anyway, until the doctors at the primary receiving hospitals had learned how to diagnose this infection, how would they have known whether to send the patient to isolation units? Or should patients suffering from a disease that the doctors hadn’t yet worked out the correct treatment for have been transferred possibly hundreds of miles to the nearest Nightingale?

          1. Hope
            March 3, 2021

            There are many diseases and highly infectious disasters that have the same principles as a pandemic. Plans written and tested for such eventualities. Have you ever looked at your local risk register to see what might effect where you live? Required under Civl Contingency Act. Are you really that dull?

            NHS employ operational officers to plan and prepare for these things. Senior staff participate in exercises for them as well!

            Perhaps you think it is left to luck on the day?

      2. Lifelogic
        March 3, 2021

        They used to call the solution fever hospitals.

      3. Hope
        March 3, 2021

        SM,
        Easy you separate them ie nightingale hospitals. You do not allow them to enter a&e to infect all those who wait! Are you really that slow on the uptake? Even JR made the point at the beginning. Why not porta cabins in car parks as catering centres?

        I wonder why we have had hazchem units at all major events and at royal vip events?

      4. Hope
        March 3, 2021

        The TV pictures of emergency hospitals being built in China in January were a bit of clue. Similarly the govt departments are required by law to plan prepare and test for pandemics and such events. Why did govt and its departments fail to activate its plans required by law?

        Best we forget all those periodic exercises for nuclear plant leaks and disasters, required for them to have a licence, there are not enough hospitals! Same for chemical factory explosions.

        Good grief.

      5. Roy Grainger
        March 3, 2021

        The better system is isolation hospitals as we used in previous pandemics and as some other countries did this time (parts of Germany).

    2. agricola
      March 2, 2021

      To the best of my knowledge there is no outbreak on infection at inns. They have been so long out of use that the idea is barely credible. I supose some could be full of asylum seekers or arrivals from toxic parts of the World, but they are well contained so there should be no problem.

      What hospitals do with their beds and how they fill them is best left to the medical staff of said hospitals. Politicians think they can recognise a bed and therefore have the expertise to know what or who to put in it. I suggest they back off and leave it to people who really know, and stop wasting the time of the Secretary of State for Health who has bigger fish to fry.

      1. agricola
        March 2, 2021

        I would add, the last time politicians developed a bed fixation they came up with Nightingale hospitals, only to discover they had nobody to man them. They were however good for photo opportunities.

  2. Lifelogic
    March 2, 2021

    We have a dire communist, top down, virtual monopoly healthcare syste,m with very poor outcomes indeed for such a developed nation. Very unresponsive to “customer” demand as they do not pay and have no power.

    Death per Covid case UK 0.3% about double the rate in most developed countries with more sensible health care systems.

    Anthony Fauci in the US is saying they will not delay second doses to have more first doses. This seems totally idiotic to me and will surely cause loads of extra death is you look at the figures. Unless that is you have no shortage of vaccines. The one dose first policy in the UK seems to have worked very well indeed if you look at the figures saving thousands of lives.

    A shame JCVI caused over 1000 extra death by blatant gender discrimination in the vaccine priority order. It also would have enabled unlocking about 2 weeks earlier saving £billions too.

    1. agricola
      March 2, 2021

      The rosy glow of hindsight.

      The USA may be in luck, Johnson &Johnson are reported to have developed a one shot vaccine, I hope it gets approval and puts Covid to bed once and for all in the USA.

      I hope Rishi Sunak comes up with some bright ideas for a post Brexit/Covid UK. I want to see us buzzing with entrepreneurial drive come thursday morning. It’s time to go about, not time to be twitching at the tiller.

      1. Lifelogic
        March 2, 2021

        Not hindsight at all I suggested this well before Blair and then others did.

      2. Bill B.
        March 2, 2021

        We’ll start to see those ‘bright ideas’ soon enough, Agricola. Higher taxes, fuel duty, and national insurance, public sector pay and universal credit freezes as inflation mounts, negative interest rates, raids on pensions, more GP surgeries sold off to international finance, etc etc.

        A wonderful future to look forward to, all thanks to ‘flattening the curve’.

        1. G Wheatley
          March 3, 2021

          …….don’t forget the Cyprus-Stylie raid on savings accounts (not just reduced interest, but an actual raid on the capital therein).

    2. Know-Dice
      March 2, 2021

      LL you have had a “bee in your bonnet” about the gender discrimination for some time now….
      The JCVI briefing of 26th February shows that you were absolutely right to put this discrimination forward as a policy that they [JCVI] should address.
      The graph on page 4 here – https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/965178/No._10_press_conference_slides_-_USE_THIS.pptx.pdf clearly shows that there is a large gender difference in critically ill Covid patients even down to the 35-39 age group…

      1. jerry
        March 2, 2021

        @Know-Dice; Yes but for every one of LL’s bees there are also other peoples bees, such as the one I pointed out; all those who have COPD (or might have, due to occupation), and surely such people are a far higher priority for vaccination than someone who has spent their entire working life sat in an office.

        1. a-tracy
          March 2, 2021

          Jerry, do you know people with COPD that haven’t been given the vaccine yet? I know of people under 30 with conditions Eg coeliac that have been offered their first vaccine, in home based work too. They are cracking on vaccinating dentists, social workers even those home based, training head of department teachers to give jabs and bringing in obese younger people with other related conditions locally. I spoke to someone that got their jab last weekend, 12 people in their slot and half of those people were under 35 so they do seem to be vaccinating younger people with other health conditions.

          1. jerry
            March 3, 2021

            @a-tracy; It’s not the known-knowns that I’m pointing out but the known-unknowns, those who are known to have had occupational exposure that might leave them with undiagnosed COPD (as an example), some who show no symptoms, but others who already display symptoms that until this time last year give little or no concern to the individual, but because of the perceived health concerns surrounding CV19 since March last year is now of active concern that perversely is perhaps currently even less likely to be presented to a GP (and thus get onward referral).

            My point is not to repeatedly stamp my virtual feet, as Mr Life is, demanding queue jumping, but to point out the many ‘special cases’ that can be made for all sorts of groups, that a line in the sand has had to be drawn somewhere.

  3. Lifelogic
    March 2, 2021

    Sorry 3% (alas not 0.3%)

  4. a-tracy
    March 2, 2021

    What happened to all the pods and beds from inside the nightingale hospital? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52125059
    Could they be re-used within the current hospital systems to make a better division of beds and space rather than just the plastic sheets used at say the Royal Stoke and extra state of the art new equipment with computer screens to use. If these pods were suitable for pandemic care wouldn’t they be better used in large wards where the risk of cross-contamination is too high at the moment?

    1. G Wheatley
      March 3, 2021

      I’ve heard that the Birmingham one opened and then closed agaon without a single bed having ever been occupied.

  5. Alan Holmes
    March 2, 2021

    Reduce capacity to control infections of a disease with a 99.8% survival rate whilst denying care to hundreds of thousands with far more dangerous illnesses. To present that as anything but a disaster is incredible and pretty much shows how dumbed down people now are in Britain if they accept it. There should be riots in the streets.

  6. Lindsay McDougall
    March 2, 2021

    If you are wanting to control infection was this not the wrong question? Shouldn’t we be asking how many COVID-19 patients are being treated in Nightingale hospitals, where they can be properly isolated? The fact that the Secretary of State for Health and the NHS board might find this question highly inconvenient is just too bad.
    If we need to recruit and retain more nurses to staff the Nightingale Hospitals, why not do something revolutionary such as paying them a bit more? After all, the Chancellor is throwing a lot of money at hopeless causes. Why not do something useful instead?

  7. Peter2
    March 2, 2021

    Interesting to see the latest poll sees the Conservatives eight point ahead of Labour with the other minor parties in low single figures.
    Despite lots of trolls on here talking up the “dreadful Tories trope it appears few are actually listening.
    In another poll Starmer is less popular than “dont know” as potential Prime Minister

  8. Mike Wilson
    March 2, 2021

    What’s that old expression … ‘ask a silly question, get a silly answer’.

    Questions posed to ministers of the crown are covered by the maxim … ‘ask any question, never get an answer’.

    And, of course, instead of keeping all the Covid patients together – they have been distributed widely across the NHS – meaning the NHS has been virtually closed as far as treating anything else is concerned.

    I know this for a fact – the NHS was unable to offer a date for a hernia repair operation (a hernia can turn into a life threatening emergency) so I had to pay to have it done privately. Me and millions of others. All so elderly people with other underlying health conditions can all be kept two beds apart in general hospitals – instead of in the isolation hospitals that were built and, tragically, not used.

  9. MiC
    March 3, 2021

    It is not a reduction in bed capacity which is required to control infection.

    It is a reduction in bed DENSITY.

    1. G Wheatley
      March 3, 2021

      No. It’s a reduction in the number of ct-cycles for PCR that is required. Or indeed the cessation of the use of this procedure.

      Kary Mullis (the inventor) stated that the process should never be taken past 34 cycles. he also said that it should not be used as a diagnostic test in asymptomatic individuals. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for the discovery/development of PCR, so he should know what he’s talking about (as opposed to Fauci & ‘Professor’ Neil Ferguson, the latter being a biomedical mathematician).

      We are testing anybody and everybody and using 45 cycles of amplification (producing over 35 TRILLION copies from one (dead) fragment of corona viral RNA in the sample.

      Cut the cycles to 34, or bin the ‘test’ and the pandemic goes away. Just like er….. ‘Flu, which I heard Chris Whitty state last month that we had succeeded in “getting rid of…”. Really Chris? Best inform the Pope and the Nobel Committee. as you will be in the frame for both beatification AND the prize for Medicine this year.

  10. ChrisS
    March 3, 2021

    It seems very difficult to reconcile the dramatic build-up of waiting lists for treatments with the stated small reduction in the number of beds. We know that Hospitals have been quiet and during lockdowns, waiting times in A & E at our local hospitals have been very short. So why have waiting time for treatments like hip and knee operations increased so much ?

    Nobody in the NHS has been furloughed, so what have all those surgeons and support staff been doing ?

  11. Paul Cuthbertson
    March 3, 2021

    Hospital Cleaning was contracted out when we disposed of in house good old “Mrs Mops” and the cleaning quality /standard is extremely poor at present as witnessed.
    Some hospitals empty but not reported by the MSM. Control of the masses. And while on the subject,separate wards for MEN and WOMEN. No gender BS.

  12. Roy Grainger
    March 3, 2021

    Your question pre-supposes that infection control was improved as a result of this decrease. Was it ? Rumour (in the absence of data) strongly suggests it wasn’t.

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