Southmead Hospital staff battling to discharge patients for Christmas after 'quad-demic' of viruses
ITV News' Max Walsh spoke to medics at Southmead Hospital this festive season.
Staff at Southmead Hospital say they’re trying to get as many patients home in time for Christmas - after what’s been described as a "flood" of festive infections.
Flu cases are already surpassing last year’s peak and doctors say viruses are expected to rise in the coming days as families and friends get together.
The impact of flu - alongside RSV, Norovirus and covid - is being described as a quaddemic.
The latest NHS figures show that, nationally:
One in 20 hospital beds is being taken up by a festive bug
There were more than 2 thousand 600 2,629 patients with flu in hospital last week
That includes 125 in critical care beds - up 90% on the week before
More than 700 beds 711 are taken up by Norovirus patients - a quarter more than last year
Laura got her flu jab at Southmead Hospital on Friday 20 December. She's one of millions of people across the country to receive the vaccine in the last few months.
She said: "I'm newly diabetic, so I think if you get flu it can be a lot worse and affect my health a lot more so I wanted to be safe."
Meanwhile, staff are also fighting to keep themselves healthy during this pressurised time of the year.
Nurse Ann Williams said: "If you've got flu it's usually a week-long illness, if not more, depending on how resilient you are so that's massive impact on the workforce if your whole department gets flu you could be six or seven people down, it makes a real difference."
In A&E - also known as the Emergency Department - the number of people attending with seasonal viruses has also risen.
Claire Dudley, vaccination manager, said: "We're already seeing queues into ED. We had a critical incident a couple of weeks ago and a lot of that was to do with levels of flu."
In November, the hospital became extremely busy with patients and had to trigger extraordinary measures to cope with the demand.
Steve Hams, the chief nursing officer, explained why this was the case.
He said: "I think it's fair to say that winter has started perhaps two or three weeks earlier than it normally does. Our intention over the next three or four days is to get as many people home as we possibly can.
"Being in hospital at Christmas - whilst we make it as joyful as we can - is pretty miserable. So we want to get people home, with their families, enjoying Christmas.
The team in charge of doing precisely that - on this respiratory ward - are discussing who might be ready to leave and when
Sarah Walker, who's part of the integrated discharge service, said: "People that are fit for discharge, that need a service for discharge, but looking at whether or not we can get family to support them so that we can get them home for Christmas.
"And between us this morning we've managed to get one lady out with family support today. So that'll be one very happy person home for Christmas."