NHS facing worst winter on record as flu admissions rise 40% in a week
ITV News Health Editor Emily Morgan reports on the looming winter crisis in the NHS as the health service is hit by a flu surge, strikes, a recruitment crisis and Covid backlogs
A flu surge has seen the number of people in hospital in England with the virus rise 40% in the past week, according to official figures.
An average of 482 patients a day were in hospital with the flu last week, compared to 344 the week before, according to NHS England's latest data.
Adult norovirus cases were also up - up a quarter over the previous week – with 157 hospital beds being taken up each day last week (up from 126).
It follows a warning that the NHS is facing a 'tripledemic' threat of Covid, flu and record demand for emergency services.
NHS England is under severe pressure as its heads into what is expected to be the health service's "most challenging winter yet", as new figures show a record number of vacancies and long ambulance wait times.
Performance figures show the NHS is struggling to cope with rising demand, with the number of patients waiting for routine hospital treatment at an all-time high and accident and emergency and the ambulance service failing to hit key waiting times targets.
Nearly one in three patients arriving at hospitals in England by ambulance last week waited at least 30 minutes to be handed over to A&E teams, NHS England figures revealed.
More than 11,000 patients – 15% of the total – waited over an hour.
The numbers are higher than at any point last winter, and up on the levels reported for the previous week.
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Vacancies across the NHS in England have risen to a new record high with more than 133,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) posts unfilled
There were 133,446 FTE vacancies across the health service at the end of September, up 0.3% from 133,104 at the end of June. It is the highest number of vacancies in records going back to June 2017, and up 29% year on year from the 103,809 vacancies reported at the end of September 2021.
The vacancy rate across the NHS in England – the number of vacancies as a proportion of planned staffing levels – stood at 9.7% at the end of September 2022, the same as the previous quarter and highest on record.
Experts have said the staffing crisis is one of the key factors fuelling other issues and have repeatedly called for a long-term workforce plan to tackle the gaps.
But while vacancies fell across five of the seven regions in England from the end of June to the end of September, year-on-year vacancies were up everywhere.
The highest number of vacancies across every region of England was in the acute sector, with more than 20,000 in London alone.
Across England there were 9,053 FTE medical vacancies, with the Midlands region reporting the highest number at 2,059.
Professor Sir Stephen Powis, NHS national medical director, said: “These new figures show the NHS is facing a perfect storm, with winter virus cases rapidly increasing alongside ongoing pressures in emergency care and hugely constrained bed capacity.
“We have already said we expect this to be the NHS’s most challenging winter yet, which is why we started preparing earlier than ever before with extensive plans in place to deal with winter boosting bed capacity, including more than 40 control centres to track and manage demand 24/7, which are now live across England.”