The NHS is coming under “significant” pressure amid a rise in Covid cases in virtually every area of England, the chief medical officer has warned, with hospitalisations likely to continue increasing at least until April.
Prof Chris Whitty said the mounting numbers of people becoming infected was likely to be largely driven by the new Omicron variant, BA.2. The sharp resurgence of the coronavirus underlined that the crisis “is not over”, Whitty added.
Speaking at the annual conference of the Local Government Association and the Association of Directors of Public Health, Whitty also said those hoping for an “end point” should not expect one, with coronavirus likely to remain a threat to public health for decades.
Whitty raised concerns that other areas of public health had “gone backwards” in the last two years, including obesity and alcohol. Child obesity rates in particular were now “significantly worse” than they were at the start of the pandemic, he warned.
However, while there was an urgent need to tackle problems in a number of other areas of public health, Covid-19 remained a major threat, he said. “Covid cases are now rising quite rapidly – from quite a high base – and this is driven by a number of different factors, of which BA.2, the new Omicron variant is a large part. Rates are high and rising in virtually all parts of England.”
While the rise in cases was not leading to a surge in deaths, Whitty added, the NHS was seeing increasing numbers of people requiring hospital treatment for Covid.
“If we look at hospitalisations, there are now quite significant numbers of people in hospital,” he told delegates at the conference. “They are now rising again, and I think will continue to rise for at least the next two weeks – so there is pressure on the NHS.
“It is currently being driven by Omicron rather than new variants, but we need to keep a very close eye on this because at any point new variants could emerge anywhere in the world, including the UK, as happened with the Alpha variant.”
The number of people in hospital with Covid in two regions of England has climbed to the highest level for more than a year. South-east England has now joined the south-west in recording patient levels last seen in February 2021, surpassing the peaks reached in the previous surge of infections at the start of 2022.
A total of 1,956 people with Covid-19 were in hospital in the south-east on 21 March, the highest since 19 February last year, according to new figures from NHS England. And in south-west England 1,365 patients were recorded on 21 March, the highest since 9 February 2021. In both regions about half of people in hospital with Covid-19 are being treated primarily for something else rather than coronavirus.
But the continuing rise in patients testing positive for Covid – up 26% week-on-week in the south-west and 20% in the south-east– is another sign of the growing prevalence of the virus across the country. The total number of people in hospital with Covid in England stands at 13,060, the highest figure since 31 January this year.
The health secretary, Sajid Javid, said on Monday that despite the jump in infections and hospital patients, there was “no particular cause for concern”.
Figures published on Friday by the Office for National Statistics showed that infection levels were continuing to rise across most of the UK, with 3.3 million people estimated to have coronavirus in the week to 12 March, up from 2.6 million the previous week.
Asked by a delegate when the pandemic might end, Whitty said that while Covid would become less dominant over time, it would remain a significant problem across the world “for the rest of our lives”.
“Let’s have no illusions about that. I’m expecting it to be probably – in the UK – seasonal but interspersed at least for the next two or three years by new variants … I think we should just accept that is what we’re going to deal with and just roll with it rather than expect some end point.”