A&E departments ‘absolutely full to bursting’ as flu surge worsens already dire situation, top medic warns
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Hospitals ‘don’t have enough beds’ to deal with additional pressure of bad flu season. Around half of A&E departments are “full to bursting” after a ‘quad-demic’ of respiratory infections heaps pressure on already stretched services, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine has warned.
![[There has not been a usual lull before Christmas in accident and emergency as a quad-demic of respiratory infections hits services]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/25/08/PA-78463625.jpg)
Dr Ian Higginson, its vice-president, has said that things were already looking “pretty grim” for the NHS on Christmas Eve. He said emergency departments “simply don’t have enough beds in our hospitals”. The Royal College put a call-out to senior managers in the NHS on Friday night, with half responding.
Dr Higginson said that “all but two of them said that the emergency departments were absolutely full to bursting”. He told Sky News: “Normally just before Christmas we’d expect a bit of a lull. So I’m afraid things are looking pretty difficult out there for our patients and for our staff.”.
NHS officials said in early December that hospitals in England were managing “record flu levels going into winter”. They said hospitals were facing a ‘quad-demic’, a term coined to describe the four conditions expected to heap additional pressure on services in the winter months.
These are flu, Covid-19, respiratory syncytial vicus and norovirus. Figures published the NHS last Thursday show that the number of people in hospital with flu in England had jumped 41 per cent in a week - and was more than four times the number at the same point last year.
