Warning 'NHS risks being overwhelmed' by Omicron 'quite quickly' - with any new measures taking two weeks to have an impact
Hospitals have already been forced to use hotels, hospices and care homes to safely discharge as many people who are medically fit to leave as possible.
"What I’m very concerned about is our NHS staff, my dear colleagues who have worked so, so hard all through the repeated waves of this infection. How are they going to cope?" "Trust leaders can see why the government is arguing that, in the absence of a surge of seriously ill older patients coming into hospital, that threshold hasn’t yet been crossed," he said.
Speaking to Sky News, he said: "While the proportion of people who end up in hospital as a result of Omicron is smaller, we are definitely seeing significant increases." Separate data on hospital admissions suggests that 71% of Covid patients in hospitals in England on December 21 were primarily being treated for the virus.
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