This weekend is set to be the NHS’ worst surge in the number of people being admitted seriously ill since 1948, according to a medical expert. Oncologist and Chief Medical Officer for Rutherford Health, Professor Karol Sikora, spoke to Sky News about the likely timetable for the outbreak spread in the country and the need for the Government to publish an exit strategy. The Department of Health and Social Care on Thursday announced that a further 938 people have died from coronavirus, bringing the UK total to just over 7,000.
Professor Sikora told Sky: “The good news is we are plateauing off.
“We’ve heard from the Medical Director of NHS England that she agrees that we are plateauing off in terms of the number of infections.
“Unfortunately, we’re heading for the worst weekend in the history of the NHS since 1948.
“Never before have we seen so many people seriously ill come as a surge to the NHS.”
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He continued: “That’s why we’ve got to have these social distancing arrangements, including over the weekend.
“As we come off the plateau of the number of patients, then we’ll see a decrease in the hospitalisations.
“There’s a little hint that that’s already happened, the number of hospital admissions are falling now.
“Then we’ll see the death rate fall, probably not for a week or two.”
The oncologist added: “So it’s personally so disastrous for so many families that lose loved ones, but we will get to the end of that.
“The Government, I think, has to talk about some options for the dates.
“They must have options for when we can be released because people will go mad if we carry on like this.”
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Professor Sikora also said: “It’s good to talk about it, we can all argue about it.
“But we have to come to some hopeful conclusion.”
The Government’s Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser confirmed that growth in the number of hospitalised coronavirus patients is “definitely getting slower”.
Angela McLean told yesterday’s press conference that the virus has not been “accelerating out of control” in recent days, as had been feared.
At that time, the numbers of COVID-19 patients in critical care had only increased by four percent in the last 24 hours, according to Government data.
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