The Government has no current plans to implement its Plan B for tackling coronavirus, the Health Secretary said tonight (Wednesday), adding that ministers do not believe the pressures on the NHS are unsustainable.
In his first ever Downing Street press conference, Sajid Javid repeated his warning that Covid-19 cases could reach 100,000 a day as the country enters a challenging winter period.
He said the UK was seeing “greater pressure” on the NHS but said the Government will “do what it takes to make sure that this pressure doesn’t become unsustainable, and that we don’t allow the NHS to become overwhelmed.”
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Deaths “remain mercifully low” at the moment, he said, but added: “We’ve always known that the winter months would pose the greatest threat to our road to recovery.”
He added: “Thanks to the vaccination programme, the link between hospitalisations and deaths has significantly weakened, but it’s not broken.
“So we must all remember that this virus will be with us for the long term and remains a threat to our loved ones, and a threat to the progress that we’ve made in getting our nation closer to normal life.”
He stressed that, aside from vaccinations, people can take other measures such as meeting outdoors where possible, ensuring good ventilation, wearing masks in crowded spaces and taking lateral flow tests.
He added: “None of us want to go backwards now.
“With winter soon upon us, these little steps make a big difference.
“And they’re more important now than they have ever been.”
NHS ‘very, very busy’
Latest Government figures show that a further 179 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Wednesday.
As of 9am on Wednesday, there had been a further 49,139 lab-confirmed Covid-19 cases in the UK.
Hospital admissions stand at 868 on average per day over the last seven days, up from 780 a week earlier, a rise of 11%.
NHS England’s national medical director said the health service is “very, very busy indeed”.
Professor Stephen Powis told the Downing Street press conference said there are just over 6,000 patients with Covid-19 in main hospitals “which is back to where we were in the middle of September”.
“And I anticipate that over the next week or two that number will increase because infection rates are increasing,” he added.
“It’s not just Covid of course, we have one eye to the flu season and we don’t know what’s going to happen with flu this year but there is a risk that we will get more flu back and it will be worse than previous years because we missed out on a season last year.
“There are other viruses around as well and of course we are continuing to do all that work around the recovery of our elective and routine services so it is very, very busy indeed.”
Earlier, Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation which represents health bodies, warned “we risk stumbling into a winter crisis” unless measures such as face masks and vaccine passports – the Government’s “Plan B” for the coming months – are introduced in England.
He called for ministers to come up with a “Plan C” of even tougher restrictions if those measures are insufficient to address pressure on the health service.