The government has encouraged people to protect the NHS. It now needs to encourage them to protect themselves
curious feature of this pandemic that hospital emergency departments are unusually empty. An uptick in the number of pneumonia admissions has been more than balanced out by an enormous fall in the number of people coming in with other problems. “It is eerily quiet,” reports one emergency doctor. “You almost want it to be busy, so you feel all those preparations are useful.”NHS
, save lives”. But the message is intended for healthy folk, so that they should not transmit the virus, not for those who need treatment for non-covid illnesses. Doctors are concerned that people are staying away from hospitals so as not to add to the pressure on the health service or because they fear catching the virus.
This is not entirely bad. For one thing, the quiet has made reorganisation easier. And it is likely that some of the drop-off reflects a genuine decline in need. Many of the so-called “worried well” are now probably more worried by a trip to hospital than by their supposed illness. With more handwashing, it is little surprise that admissions for gastrointestinal illnesses have dropped. With pubs closed and roads empty, there are fewer accidents.
Yet the scale of the drop in admissions has alarmed medics. Before the crisis, the health service estimated that just one in ten emergency attendances were “non-urgent”, meaning treatment could have been provided by a general practitioner outside of hospital. Emergency departments are not just seeing fewer stomach bugs. There has been a sharp fall in the number of emergency admissions with cardiac problems. Forthcoming data will show that referrals for cancer diagnosis have plunged.
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