One in eight NHS trusts in England did not have a single spare intensive care bed last week, official figures show as hospitals continued to grapple with the winter wave of critically ill coronavirus patients.
NHS England figures published today reveal 18 out of 140 major trusts had 100 per cent occupancy in their ICUs on every day in the week ending January 24, up slightly on the 15 that were full to the brim the previous week.
These included University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, one of the largest trusts in England, along with Sandwell & West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust and George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust, which are also in the West Midlands.
But the problem was not confined to the Midlands, as major trusts in the North and in Yorkshire — including St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Chesterfield Royal Hospital — also reported having no spare critical care capacity.
Even hospitals in the South West, which had managed to avoid the worst of the pandemic throughout 2020, were seeing their ICUs pushed to the brink, with Portsmouth Hospitals University National Health Service Trust and the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust also reporting 100 per cent occupancy.
The figures also show that ICUs are more than 70 per cent busier than they have been at any time over the past five years — with 5,446 critical care beds occupied on January 24, the most recent day statistics are available for.
For comparison, there were 3,034 critically-ill patients at the same time last winter, and the average over the last four years stood at 3,183.
The super-infectious Kent strain of Covid sparked a devastating winter wave of ICU admissions which have stretched NHS intensive care capacity to its limit, with hospitals having to open emergency ICU beds and scrap thousands of operations to deal with the volume of virus patients.
Even though the number of people in intensive care in England has risen by about 5 per cent in the last seven days, there is reason to believe the numbers will start to fall in the coming weeks. Hospital admissions of people with Covid-19 have plummeted by a third in the last week and the number of patients in hospital with the virus is starting to fall in all regions of England.
The number of patients waiting more than an hour to be handed over from ambulance teams to A&E staff has also dropped to its lowest level since the start of the year.
The figures suggest tighter restrictions on people’s movements and activities introduced across England after Christmas, culminating in the nationwide lockdown from January 5, are starting to have an impact.
A total of 2,648 hospital admissions of people with Covid-19 in England were reported for January 25, according to figures from NHS England.
This is down 29 per cent on the equivalent figure for a week earlier, and is the lowest since December 31.
All regions are now recording week-on-week decreases in daily admissions, including a drop of 35 per cent in the Midlands and 32 per cent in London.
The number of Covid-19 patients in hospital has also fallen week-on-week in all regions. London has seen the biggest drop, with 6,272 patients at 8am on January 27, down 17 pe cent on the previous week.
South-east and south-west England have both seen an 11 per cent week-on-week fall, to 4,811 and 2,094 patients respectively.
The Midlands and eastern England are both down 6 per cent, with 5,940 and 3,811 respectively. In north-east England/Yorkshire the number is down 4 per cent to 3,654, and in north-west England it is down 1% to 4,264.
For England as a whole, the number of Covid-19 patients stood at 30,846 on January 27, down 9 per cent on the previous week and the lowest number since January 10.
Separate figures from NHS England show the number of patients waiting longer than an hour to be handed over from ambulance teams to A&E staff at hospitals in England fell last week to its lowest level since the start of the year.
A total of 3,283 delays of more than 60 minutes were recorded across all acute trusts in the seven days to January 24.
This compares with 3,333 in the previous week, and 5,513 in the seven days to January 10, which was the highest weekly figure so far this winter.
University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust reported the highest number last week for an individual trust (289 delays of more than 60 minutes), followed by Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust (155) and University Hospitals Bristol & Weston NHS Foundation Trust (132).
A handover delay does not always mean a patient has waited in the ambulance. They may have been moved into an A&E department, but staff were not available to complete the handover.