Barts Health has moved into a ‘high pressure’ phase this week, following a high number of patients with Covid-19 across the hospitals.
This means the hospitals have between 70-150 Covid-19 patients in critical care; with up to 500 overall and 95%+ occupancy levels. This is a stage lower than the highest possible escalation phase.
The trust said: “The critical care unit at The Royal London Hospital reopened to Covid-19 patients in October and is crucial to the plans we developed with our partners in north east London.”
“To help us manage the high number of patients we are seeing, we will be deferring some routine procedures over the coming days so we can redeploy staff and increase the number of critical care and general beds available. This is not a blanket postponement and does not affect our cancer patients. Patients will be contacted directly if their elective procedures need to be postponed.”
“An internal incident was declared at Whipps Cross Hospital last weekend because of emergency pressures but has since been lifted. A&E has remained open throughout this period, at Whipps Cross and at all our hospitals.”
The trust outlined its plans for managing pressures during Winter here.
