Hospital boss says Covid-19 nearly disabled NHS

According to Professor Marcel Levi, chief executive of the University College London Hospital Trust, the NHS was already running at nearly full capacity with long waits for routine operations even before the virus arrived.

In an interview with the BBC, Professor Levi said that it could take “a very long time” to clear the backlog of non-urgent operations and procedures, which built up during the pandemic due to cancellations. He added that more funds would be needed as a priority to run evening and weekend sessions in operating theatres.

Although he said he believed hospitals coped well in the face of extreme pressure when infection rates surged during the second wave earlier this year, he said the first wave was a very different story. He said the NHS was not as robust as it should have been, a key reason being that the UK was one of the countries with the lowest number of intensive care beds per 1,000 of population.

“You cannot run a healthcare system at the capacity we run the NHS. We are always 95% full, so it’s impossibly to quickly respond to an emergency situation.”

He also pointed out that there were already long waiting lists even before the pandemic hit. “Covid is actually a magnifying glass, making it clear that capacity in the NHS is not sufficient – that has now become very obvious. It’s going to take, I am afraid, a very long time to get where we want to be.”

Professor Levi went on to praise NHS staff, saying “The resilience and the quality and the camaraderie of people I have been working with – doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, porters, cleaners, teamwork – that’s something I have never encountered before.”

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Posted by Tony May, Partner/head of Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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