Addenbrooke's Hospital insists it can cope with Covid despite 130 staff absences

Bosses at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge insist they have plans to cope with increasing demand despite having more than 130 absent due to coronavirus.

On Thursday the hospital trust said it had 137 staff off because of Covid-19 sickness or isolation, with 35 patients being treated for the virus, including six in critical care. Its total workforce numbers more than 11,000 staff, it said.

Dr Ewen Cameron, the chief operating officer, said the trust was managing to cope with the impact of staff absences.

"It is putting some pressure on the hospital, but at the moment we haven't seen any any cases of the [Omicron] variant being admitted to hospital," he said.

Dr Cameron said they were keeping a close eye on what was happening and had plans in place for another wave of the virus.

"There's a lot of uncertainty about the severity of illness that this variant will cause, but we've got plans to increase the capacity in the hospital that's available for patients with Covid and potentially increase the number of critical care beds."

Hospital managers said they had learned a massive amount over the last two years on how to cope with the sort of problems posed by a new wave of coronavirus.

Dr Cameron added: "We don't know exactly what we're going to face, but we have the ability to to to cope with a whole range of different possibilities."

Over the past week, as well as dealing with Covid, the hospital carried out 469 planned operations and 223 emergency operations, it added.

Dr Cameron's comments came on the day that the UK set a new record for lab-confirmed Covid-19 cases, with 88,376 being registered - the highest number since the pandemic began.

The figure is almost 10,000 more than the previous record of 78,610 set on Wednesday as the Omicron variant spreads across the country.

A further 146 people have died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid.