Oral Answers to Questions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateRupa Huq
Main Page: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)Department Debates - View all Rupa Huq's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(3 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberI am grateful for my hon. Friend’s continued support, not least in making sure that he examines the data very carefully, which I know he is passionate about. He is absolutely right that 88% of mortality effectively comes from the top four most vulnerable cohorts in the JCVI’s list of nine, and 99% comes from those top nine most vulnerable cohorts.
On that point in time—that point of inflection between community spread and vaccination—I will quote the deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan Van-Tam, who said, “Ask me in a few weeks’ or a few months’ time if it does obviously impact on spread.” The scientists are hopeful, as are we, and as is the Prime Minister—not least because he wants to see the back of these non-pharmaceutical interventions in the economy.
Covid, and particularly the new strain of covid, has had a significant impact on NHS bed capacity. As of 10 January, 30,758 beds across the NHS were occupied by covid patients. In just the past day, that has risen to around 32,000, which is over a third of all available beds. The latest bed occupancy data shows that just shy of 80,000 of the NHS’s roughly 90,000 total general and acute beds were occupied.
It is great that the NHS, as I have heard locally, is working hard to stop intensive care beds from running out after a decade of no expansion, now that a major incident has been declared in London. However, can the Minister guarantee that this will not just be a bureaucratic exercise? Will we take a population-based approach, listen to clinicians in apportioning capacity and allow hospitals in high-need mixed ethnicity areas, such as Ealing Hospital, which is currently on a black alert, their fair share, rather than the powerful players—the central London teaching hospitals—always getting all the extra allocation?
I can reassure the hon. Lady that beds and increased capacity, where we put them in place, are allocated on the basis of where they are needed. She is right to highlight the pressure that her local hospital trust, London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust, is under. The team there, as across the NHS, are doing an amazing job, but the critical care bed occupancy rate in her trust was 98.7% on the latest figures I have. That is extremely significant pressure, but I can give her the reassurance that we look to ensure that all areas receive the resources they need.