The UK Government knew “this was going to be one of the most pressurised winters” for the NHS and that extra investment had been given to help the service cope, a minister has said.
Health minister Gillian Keegan, asked about the number of critical incidents being declared by NHS trusts, told BBC Breakfast: “Right now, they are under extreme pressure with the Omicron variant, with the number of positive cases and the increase in hospitalisations, and at this point in time when they always have extreme pressure.
“We knew that and we actually knew that going into this period – that’s why we’ve put an extra £5.4 billion of investment to try and get extra staff, get some extra capacity to be able to put virtual wards in place, extra beds and extra capacity with the Nightingales, etc, all of which we anticipated, that this was going to be really difficult.
“We’ve had two years of a pandemic, there is a build-up of people who haven’t come forward who need electives – there is a backlog we need to deal with – and then you have got the unknown of Covid – we now know we have Omicron – and also flu was a big unknown as well, how much flu we would have this year.
“We always knew that this was going to be one of the most pressurised winters and they are doing an absolutely amazing job.
“Part of one of the procedures we have with our NHS contingency and resilience plans is actually to declare this critical state, and then they will work with NHS regional colleagues and the local resilience forums to make sure that mutual aid is provided, or whatever support is required, so it is part of the escalation process.
“These are tried and tested plans, we have these plans in place every winter.”
