Covid is 'taking its toll' on hospital staff with more than one death a day in Nottinghamshire

Covid-19 is killing more than one person a day in Nottinghamshire, with the pandemic said to be putting the NHS under extreme pressure this winter.

Amanda Sullivan, of NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Clinical Commissioning Group, revealed the concerning number of patients still being admitted to hospital with coronavirus.

In the week running up to December 5, Nottinghamshire’s hospitals including the Queen’s Medical Centre and Nottingham City Hospital had 100 new admissions with covid.

And 175 covid patients were occupying a hospital bed overall from December 7.

Mrs Sullivan said this was a big proportion of hospital beds that would have usually been taken up by patients with other conditions and that it had added to the pressures.

From December 2 to 8, there were 16 deaths from covid-19, an average of more than one per day.

“It is a daily event that people are dying of covid,” Mrs Sullivan said.

Currently, there are no covid-19 hospital patients in Nottinghamshire with the new variant, Omicron, which was first detected in South Africa. There are 11 cases so far in the area, nine in the city and two in the county. All of these people are currently well enough to recover at home.

Mrs Sullivan said: “The NHS continues to operate under extreme pressure and our intensive care units continue to run with a higher number of patients than before the pandemic.

“Staff have been working in really highly pressurised environments for nearly two years now and this has taken its toll on people’s well-being.

“The extreme pressure is a combination of three things, we continue to have significant numbers of people in hospital who are seriously or critically ill with covid and this is starting to rise again.

“Secondly, we are seeing more people come forward with winter illnesses and other conditions that have become worse during the pandemic.

“Thirdly, we are dealing with a backlog of planned operations and other treatments that were deferred in earlier waves [of the pandemic] and we are keen to keep as much as that going as we possibly can.

“The best thing you can do to keep yourself safe from becoming seriously ill with covid is have your vaccines then your booster when you are eligible.”