all non-urgent operations in england
will be postponed for at least three
months to help free up around 30,000
beds how well has the Health Service
been preparing for a potential pandemic
we've been looking into claims that for
years the government has not heeded
warnings about the lack of ventilators
and intensive care equipment our health
and social care correspondent Victoria
McDonald reports the warnings were there
almost from the beginning pictures from
China showing patients needing intensive
care and ventilation then we saw what
was happening in Italy different
hospitals same scenario the UK couldn't
say that it wasn't warned that more
equipment more staff more ventilators
were going to be needed for covered 19
patients a disease that can cause a type
of pneumonia tonight this letter has
gone out from NHS England to all trusts
saying that they must postpone all
routine operations from April the 15th
for 3 months that they must find maximum
capacity and critical care and inpatient
beds and staff and they said prepare for
and respond to the anticipated large
numbers of covered 19 patients who will
need respiratory support but is this all
too much of a scramble should the Health
Service have been better prepared
medical staff are reporting that there
is not enough protection equipment
including masks and gowns we need to
know that in the next few days that
enough will be supplied that it may mean
they have to start to manufacturing it
from scratch but we need to know that
it's happening so that we're not
suddenly falling short of the amount we
need even with the NHS flexing up what's
known as peak surge capacity the maximum
number of ICU beds is approximately
5,000 scientific modeling released
yesterday by Imperial College London
showed that if one person infects 2.4
others then in the do-nothing scenario
you will need a hundred and eighty
thousand ICU beds at the peak so the new
measures social distancing home
quarantine they aim to
bring that down but even then as many as
eleven thousand beds will still be
needed and that remains well over
capacity through viruses can spread if
you don't catch your coughs or sneezes
hygienic Lee the last epidemic the
government was confronted with was the
swine flu outbreak in 2009 this pandemic
flu report says the potential number of
referrals to critical care is likely to
exceed bed availability and that during
the peak of the pandemic there may be 10
times as many patients requiring
mechanical ventilator 'support as the
number of beds available individual NHS
trusts also flagged up the glaring
shortage of ventilators Royal Cornwall
Hospitals NHS trusts pandemic influenza
plan for example stated the demand
particularly for ventilation is likely
to exceed available resources it is 2020
the pandemic is here and it's clear now
that there are still not enough
ventilators we really only have a few
weeks to build literally thousands of
ventilators of this country we'll need
the intensive care Society says more
could have been done in the past decade
they haven't increased critical care
beds despite increased demand they said
equipment could have been kept in
storage and above all there is a need
for more staff today the NHS is running
a stress test to see how it will cope
and nobody is in any doubt that the
staff will pull out all the stops but
when this is over the question will
still remain could more have been done
earlier
Victoria MacDonald reporting now a short
time ago I spoke again to the former
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt who is now
chair of the Health Select Committee I
started by asking him if he was
satisfied but there will be enough
ventilators to tackle the virus it was
very clear listening to society vans
that they are still very worried they
may not have enough of ventilators but
the measures that were introduced
yesterday do have a chance of reducing
the peak pressure on the NHS to within
the number of intensive care
that they think they will have now
obviously we don't know we don't know
how much the public will go along with
what's been requested how much older
people will take the advice to cut down
on social interactions we're asking a
lot of a big chunk of the population now
if people cooperate with that then we
have a chance that the NHS will be able
to cope but it is only a chance we've
been looking into the whole ventilator
issue and it seems this rather vital
equipment in the event of any great a
threat to health across the nation has
been in gravely short supply in the
department health for a long long time
were you aware of it when you were
Secretary of State I wasn't actually but
you know we did a lot of pandemic
planning and I think it is true that we
all woke up to this very very late
because you know this this virus struck
us from from nowhere at the beginning of
this year but I think a lot is happening
on ventilators but I think the message
is that we can't let up because there's
still you know a possibility that this
is going to it's not going to be
possible to suppress the virus the
strategy now is to do what they've done
in in South Korea and Taiwan to try and
avoid a kind of northern Italy style
meltdown when we spoke to you last week
you were pretty critical of various
aspects of what was happening are you
more at peace tonight well I'm more
comfortable with the overall strategy
you know they're basically there was a
choice between allowing this virus to
essentially take whole with the healthy
part of the population and trying to
shield the more at-risk part of the
population that the herd immunity
approach which we were really as far as
I could see the only country in the
world that was thinking down those lines
and I was worried about that we're now
following the suppression route which i
think is better but if I have two
concerns now I think the first is that
if we're going to be successful at
suppressing the virus we need to have a
South Korean approach to testing we need
to be testing absolutely everyone who is
a potential suspect in terms of having
the virus so we can isolate them treat
them
we are a long way away from being able
to do that so we need a huge effort on
that and the second big concern I have
is protecting doctors nurses on the
front line there are clearly massive
problems with that you were close to
becoming Prime Minister yourself would
you have handled things differently I
think the government is doing the right
thing now I don't think it's right for
me to try and second-guess what they
should do
given that I'm not seeing all the
scientific advice that they're seeing
there are countries that appear to have
turned the tide and they were taking a
very different approach to us last week
now what we're being told is that we're
taking the same approach and I think
that's very very encouraging Jeremy Hunt
thank you very much indeed for talking
to us
thank you John and in his evidence to
MPs earlier the government's chief
scientific adviser Sir Patrick valance
said it would be sensible for people
with coronavirus to take paracetamol
instead of ibuprofen after concerns that
anti-inflammatory drugs could make
condition worse in its updated advice
the NHS says that there is currently no
strong evidence that ibuprofen can make
the virus worse but says until we have
more information take paracetamol to
treat the symptoms unless your doctor
has told you it is not suitable for you
across the UK hospitals are desperately
trying to increase capacity in their
intensive care units to cope with
patients requiring ventilation the
frontline of the virus pandemic our home
affairs correspondent Andy Davis is in
Merthyr Tydfil tonight and Andy you
spent the day with staff at a hospital
there haven't you Phil is in on that
well Kathy what you're about to see I
think is a rare glimpse into what's
actually going on behind the scenes in
many intensive care units around the UK
right now it in and it involves a huge
amount of work in a healthcare system
which is being rapidly reshaped in the
shadow of this virus
Prince Charles Hospital here is part of
the comb Tom Organic University Health
Board and their clinicians today will be
only too aware that there has been a
second confirmed coronavirus death in
Wales over at a hospital in Swansea they
will have seen the Welsh Health me
compelled to self isolate after his son
developed a cough they will be only too
aware also of all the modeling which has
been suggesting that critical care units
around the UK could be overwhelmed in
the months to come and they know it is
only a matter of time before they are
admitting some very sick patients here
infected with corona virus this is how
one intensive care unit around the UK is
preparing emits this escalating outbreak
okay I just wanted to clarify what we're
doing with PPE equipment in the event of
a patient with a cardiac arrest it is
yet another coronavirus briefing in yet
another operating theatre now being
emptied for new intensive care beds this
guidance is if you've got a suspected or
confirmed Cobra case which will be down
on the CDU the clinical decision unit
and you're doing an aerosol generating
procedure you wear the full PPE regalia
so that include the fp3 mask so you need
to make sure you've got a nice tight
seal on the bottom in another room
it's a briefing on coronavirus
protective equipment to get that nice
tight seal to the right of us here is
the clinical decision unit this is Dave
Jones a consultant in intensive care
medicine in Merthyr Tydfil and where he
now takes us a journey many others
infected by coronavirus will surely
follow in the weeks and months ahead so
this is now your new intensive care unit
yeah specifically for coronavirus
specifically for coronavirus cases yep
the Prince Charles hospital normally has
just eight critical care beds they're
rapidly creating 14 more so what we've
had to do is convert excuse me everybody
doing all the equipment to make this
into an intensive care unit
we're shown an operating theatre with no
table an anaesthetic machine turned
extra ventilator in the day since the
Welsh government cancelled all non
urgent operations this whole day surgery
wing is now being co-opted for
coronavirus critical care and they want
to be ready for tomorrow when you've
seen
and heard the accounts coming out of
hospitals critical care units in Italy
you must be imagining that the simple
the same could happen here we are
preparing ourselves for every
eventuality the bottom line that I'm
telling to all the staff is that we need
to be able to look back on this in 12
months time and say that we've done our
best whether his horses available with
the knowledge we had at the time this is
a critical care Department like so many
others around the UK right now
mobilizing at speed for what comes next
the sense of urgency clear from the ship
numbers of staff being deployed and
trained up for units like this around a
hundred were being trained here today to
take on critical care roles anesthetist
scrub nurses and recovery staffer here
advised on intubation skills for
coronavirus patients others are briefed
quietly in the corridor you you're
fulfilling a fundamental role right now
yeah you know it's our job for the
entity we come to look after patients we
still have to look after each other and
that's all we can do at the end of the
day how proudly you to be an NHS really
Pat at this time extremely pleasant are
your family worried about the role
you're going to be playing yes obviously
you know but I just think I can make the
NHS to care for patients that's my first
and most foremost role and that's what
I'd be doing just had confirmation from
echo yeah in cardiology we've got 24
hour echo service for our patients here
gratitude for insights shared by
counterparts in China and Italy is laced
with an acknowledgement of the enormity
of the tasks and hugely difficult
decisions ahead the preparations
isn't just shifting the ventilators from
downstairs to upstairs part of the
preparations is going to be the
psychological preparation for what is to
come
because we don't want the staff we don't
want I don't want my colleagues to be
thrown in the deep end of making these
decisions alone
and so like counterparts elsewhere in
the UK in China in France in Italy they
step forward the health care workers
upon whom so much now depends to deal
with the public health emergency the
like of which none has seen before