E3: UK coronavirus live: London hospitals seeing 'continuous tsunami' of patients, says NHS leader

Rolling coverage of all the latest UK coronavirus developments

According to Matt Hancock, the health secretary, more than 500,000 people have now expressed interest in joining the NHS volunteer responders scheme. Yesterday afternoon the figure was 405.000.

NEWS: Fantastic that 560,000 people have now responded to our call to volunteer to support our NHS to defeat #Coronavirus. Join us: https://t.co/gtYR6xW0jE pic.twitter.com/Ajvy31aa3y

NHS leaders are identifying staff to be imminently deployed to the new 4,000-bed temporary hospital being set up to treat seriously ill coronavirus patients.

Health secretary Matt Hancock announced earlier this week that the ExCeL centre in east London would become a field hospital. The site will have two wards of 2,000 beds to cope with any dramatic increase of patients in the capital.

The Today programme also interviewed Prof Neil Ferguson, the lead author on the Imperial College paper that persuaded the government to drastically escalate its social distancing strategy. Repeating a point he made in evidence to the Commons science committee yesterday, he said he thought the NHS would now be able to cope with the peak of the coronavirus epidemic, which he said would come in about three weeks’ time. He told the programme:

We are going to have a very difficult few weeks, particularly in hotspots - London for instance.

But we think, overall, with the capacity which is rapidly being put in place across the country, that whilst the health system will be intensely stressed, particularly in areas of London, it won’t break.

London hospitals are facing a “continuous tsunami” of seriously-ill patients because of coronavirus, a health service leader said this morning. Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents NHS trusts, used the phrase in an interview on the Today programme. Commenting on the situation in London, he said:

They are struggling with two things. The first is the explosion of demand they are seeing in seriously ill patients. They talk about wave after wave after wave - the word that’s often used to me is a continuous tsunami.

We are now seeing 30%, 40% and indeed in some places 50% sickness rates as staff catch the virus or are in vulnerable groups or have to self-isolate. That’s an unprecedented absence rate.

The government has ordered 10,000 ventilators to help tackle the coronavirus pandemic, billionaire entrepreneur Sir James Dyson has said. As PA Media reports, in an email to staff, the inventor said his eponymous company designed the “CoVent” at the request of Boris Johnson, and promised to donate 5,000 to the international relief effort. Dyson said teams of engineers had been working solidly on the design since receiving the call from PM 10 days ago, and the UK government had placed an initial order of 10,000 units. He added:

We have received an initial order of 10,000 units from the UK government, which we will supply on an open-book basis.

We are also looking at ways of making it available internationally.

The core challenge was how to design and deliver a new, sophisticated medical product in volume and in an extremely short space of time. The race is now on to get it into production.

Ventilators are a regulated product so Dyson and TTP will be working with the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory products Agency and the government to ensure that the product and the manufacturing process is approved.

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, wants the government and the media to name and shame companies that are forcing people to go into work for non-essential business.

Reports pouring in to MPs of businesses ignoring lockdown & forcing workers to work, putting them at risk of Covid 19 & spreading it. They are putting all our lives at risk by their greed.The Gvt must act to shut them down & the media should be naming & shaming.#phoneylockdown https://t.co/nmpWKqvxnq

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, has been criticised by ministers in recent days for not running more services on the tube (leading to some carriages being crowded, increasing the coronavirus transmission risk). This morning he has been tweeting to say that he cannot run more services, and to thank Londoners for reducing their uses of buses and the tube this week.

⚠️ One in three @TfL staff are off sick or self-isolating: we cannot run more services

⚠️ Employers: staff must work from home wherever possible to help protect our key workers who need to travel

⚠️ If you have to go to work, please don’t travel at rush hour #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/67SmQ7q3kp

Thank you to all Londoners who are following the rules and staying home.

Early-morning tube use is down another 13% compared to yesterday, bus use by a further 8%.

The more we stay at home the more lives we can save. #StayAtHome

Hospital car parking charges are to be waived for all NHS and social care staff in England while they tackle the coronavirus outbreak, health secretary Matt Hancock announced last night.

The move follows huge public support for an online petition calling on the government to suspend charges for frontline staff during the Covid-19 outbreak, which attracted over 415,000 signatures in four days.

This is a HUGE announcement and it would not have been possible without you. The momentum you created and the clarity in the message that you delivered have brought about this change.

I am in no doubt that our government did not begin this week intending to cover the cost of all parking charges for NHS staff. This is a massive success, thanks to the hundreds of thousands of you who signed this petition. I would like to pay special thanks, directly and sincerely to the secretary of state for health and social care, Matt Hancock. I cannot overstate how refreshing it feels as a doctor to have somebody in that position actually listen and respond.

Our NHS is facing an unprecedented challenge, and I will do everything I can to ensure our dedicated staff have whatever they need during this unprecedented time. So we will provide free car parking for our NHS staff who are going above and beyond every day in hospitals in England. My enormous gratitude goes out to the many NHS trusts and other organisations already providing free car parking and I urge other trusts to do the same with our backing.

Good morning. Today we’re expecting the Treasury to release details of its plan to support the self-employed who are losing work because of the coronavirus crisis. Here is an extract from our overnight preview story.

The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is expected to announce that the taxpayer will pay self-employed workers up to 80% of their recent earnings to help contain the economic impact of coronavirus, as 470,000 extra benefits claims sparked warnings of an “unemployment crisis”.

Sunak has been under growing pressure to do more for the UK’s 5 million self-employed after announcing an unprecedented job retention scheme for employees last Friday, that will see thousands paid to stay at home ...

Related: UK government fends off criticism with plan to pay self-employed

Continue reading...

Back Original Source