Don’t let Omicron overwhelm NHS this Christmas as staffing crisis escalates amid calls for national vaccine service – The Yorkshire Post says

THE emerging evidence that the Omicron variant is less serious than previous strains of Covid-19 certainly does not lessen the challenge facing the NHS this Christmas.

It is the speed at which Omicron has taken hold in less than a month that leaves hospitals and the wider care sector at a tipping point as new daily cases top 100,000 for the first time.

Under-staffed long before the pandemic started taking its toll on lives and livelihoods, the NHS is even more compromised because of staff sickness – and fatigue – after such a gruelling time since March 2020. And it is this need to protect the NHS, and a workload made even more challenging by the unvaccinated, that remains paramount in spite of the paralysis afflicting Boris Johnson’s Government.

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Nurses work at a desk surrounded by Christmas decorations on a ward for Covid patients.Nurses work at a desk surrounded by Christmas decorations on a ward for Covid patients.
Nurses work at a desk surrounded by Christmas decorations on a ward for Covid patients.

As such, it’s more important than ever for people to receive their booster jabs and follow the relevant public health guidance in order to minimise the risk to the country’s wider wellbeing.

A responsible approach being embraced by the overwhelming majority of families, this crisis is, nevertheless, another wake-up call over the longer-term management of NHS.

There’s a case to be made for a national vaccine service – as advocated by former vaccines tsar Dame Kate Bingham and now health chiefs in Hull and the East Riding – to oversee Covid jabs so hospital staff can devote more time to tackling record waiting lists.

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But this, in turn, requires more effective measures to increase the availability of hospital beds for patients and this can only be achieved by devoting far more time, and money, to the provision of all forms of community care.

Should the Government be doing more to support community care in order to ease the burden on the county's hospitals?Should the Government be doing more to support community care in order to ease the burden on the county's hospitals?
Should the Government be doing more to support community care in order to ease the burden on the county's hospitals?

And, while this has been resisted by successive governments who prefer to be judged by the amount of extra money made available for the NHS because of its special place in the national consciousness, switching resources to social care in the short-term might actually yield more significant benefits in the aftermath of Covid.

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