Covid-19: 800 coronavirus admissions to hospitals in England every day, says NHS Confederation boss

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, has said hospitals in England are seeing over 800 admissions with coronavirus every day and “around a fifth of national intensive care beds are occupied by people with the disease.”

He added that bed occupancy was around 93% with November seeing record levels of 999 contacts and ambulance callouts.

Mr Taylor warned that staff sickness levels in the NHS were rising, “particularly in London”, telling the BBC PM programme “this is all happening before January which tends to be the busiest month for frontline NHS services.”

He warned that although the NHS was working hard to keep disruptions to patient care to a minimum, “it is likely [staff] will need further support.”

“The best thing the public can to is to continue to behave in ways that will keep themselves and others safe, including taking up the offer of a vaccine or booster if they are eligible.”

Speaking to the BBC, Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: “Health leaders are not calling for further restrictions as they know these can be very damaging to people’s health and wellbeing, but given the rising cases of coronavirus and the rapid spread of Omicron, they feel it is now a question of when rather than if they will be needed.

“If the Plan B measures and boosters prove not to be enough, they expect the Government to respond quickly and pre-emptively in the national interest to the range of advice and modelling it has.”