UK Health Secretary Blames Flu, COVID-19, and Strep A for NHS Crisis

An undated file photo of an NHS hospital in England. Peter Byrne/PA

Health Secretary Steve Barclay says a combination of COVID-19, flu, and Strep A cases has created a perfect storm which is to blame for the crisis facing the National Health Service (NHS) this winter.

“There’s £500 million of investment this year going into tackling the pressure in terms of social care. So we’re putting more funding in. We’ve got more clinicians, we’ve got more staff working in the NHS,” Barclay said.

“Of course there’s a range of factors that we need to do. There’s been particular pressures over Christmas because we’ve had a surge in flu cases, COVID cases, and also a lot of concern around Strep A,” he added, in a pooled broadcast interview.

Barclay’s comments come just days after the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, Dr. Adrian Boyle, called on the government to “get a grip” on the crisis in NHS emergency departments across the country.

More than a dozen NHS trusts and ambulance services declared critical incidents over the Christmas and New Year period, and one in five ambulance patients in England waited for more than an hour to be admitted to a hospital.

Health Secretary Steve Barclay during a visit to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London on Dec. 15, 2022. Stefan Rousseau/PA Media

Barclay said the government was intent on freeing up hospital beds and creating more capacity to relieve the pressures on accident and emergency departments and reduce ambulance handover times.

Official figures for COVID-19 cases haven’t been updated since before Christmas—the next update is due on Thursday—but on Dec. 17, 2022, there were 36,963 cases in the previous seven days, up 28 percent, and 508 deaths in the same week.

Barclay said the resurgence of COVID-19 had made people reluctant to go into doctors’ surgeries. “That in particular has had an impact on cardiovascular risk.”

“There’s other factors as well in terms of the backlogs on operations. Yes, it’s important that we get the ambulances to people quickly as well, but there’s a range of factors that have played in, particularly into those cardiovascular deaths, which is the prime issue when we’re looking at the challenge in terms of excess deaths,” he added.

Barclay Focused on ‘Getting People Out of Hospital’

Barclay said the government is “focused on getting the people out of the hospital who don’t need to be there because that in turn will speed up the ambulance handover delays and get those ambulances back out responding to calls.”

Shadow health minister Rosena Allin-Khan told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme, “I’ve been an emergency doctor for 17 years and this is the worst I have ever seen our NHS, which is a sentiment shared by most of my colleagues.”

She accused Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of being “missing in action” over the NHS and pointed out that COVID-19 couldn’t be blamed because even in January 2020, before the pandemic, only one A&E department in the country was meeting the four-hour waiting target.

Allin-Khan said, “Fundamentally, we have an NHS that is in crisis, and Labour has a plan to improve the situation.”

“We will have a workforce plan that will grow the number of nurses, we will train 10,000 more nurses and midwives every year, we will double the number of district nurses, we will create 5,000 more health visitors, and we will ensure that people get the help that they need when they need it,” she added.

Ambulances are seen parked outside of Aintree University Hospital in Liverpool, United Kingdom, on Dec. 20, 2022. Annabel Lee-Ellis/Getty Images

Royal College of Nursing General Secretary Pat Cullen said, “We are seeing A&E in a dangerous state, social care overloaded, primary care suffering and staff truly broken.”

“The government cannot blame the pandemic and other winter pressures for the crisis unfolding before our eyes. This has been a long time in the making yet the government has consistently ignored warnings,” she added.

“One of the root causes is the ever-worsening workforce crisis, with nurses leaving in their droves because of a decade of real-terms pay cuts.”

Union Boss Claims ‘NHS Is on Its Knees’

Unison’s deputy head of health Helga Pile said the “NHS is on its knees like never before.”

“The government’s failure to deal with the workforce crisis is at the heart of the problems harming patients every day.

“The government must stop buck passing. Years of neglect are to blame. The way to begin fixing this mess is an immediate boost to NHS pay to stop skilled staff leaving,” she said.

The NHS faces more industrial action this month, with ambulance staff set to walk out on Jan. 11 and 23 in a row over pay, while nursing staff will strike on Jan. 18 and 19.

Ambulance workers went on strike last month over pay.

Unions have been calling on ministers to come up with an improved pay offer for NHS staff, but the government has refused to discuss pay, insisting that it was standing by the recommendations of the independent pay review bodies.

Sunak insisted last month he couldn’t budge on NHS pay because he didn’t want to exacerbate soaring inflation.

PA Media contributed to this report.