How about the following data, which suggests ICU admissions are much higher than previous years, along with numbers of occupied ICU beds in London?
https://mobile.twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1347200855376875523?s=19
Of course the main issue is not infrastructure but people so recruit the necessary numbers of nurses and doctors to staff such a facility. Not sure how many nurses you need per bed, my experience suggests it’s about one per 6 beds but let’s say you need one nurse for every 5 beds and also one doctor for every 20 beds. Multiply by three for 24/7 care so you need 60 nurses and 15 doctors to cover 100 beds. Let’s say a nurse costs £50k per year and a doctor costs £100k per year. That’s £3M for nurses and £1.5M for doctors. These resources would not be needed most of the year but they could be deployed to improve the “normal” service and eliminate agency fees.
Why not upskill existing nurses and doctors. Increase nursing pay to those that are upskilled doesn't have to be to the level of full time ICU staff. However when they are required to work in ICU pay them accordingly.
From my observation of the hospital system in New Zealand the ICU constraint is also a constraint for elective surgery hence the long waiting lists.
Also an ICU bed is still a bed which can be used for non-ICU patients if the cost accountants are worried about occupancy and utilisation rates.
They also need to look at better quickly configurable isolation systems for wards keeping patients with or without a virus separated. It is clear that a significant number of uninfected hospital patients got infected IN hospital!
Regarding the article "London Hospitals Really Are in Crisis" - regular update by senior in-house doctor.
While it could be that London hospitals really are in a crisis, and with the very greatest respect for the otherwise excellent article, as a retired analyser of data I could not help myself criticising the author's use of qualitative descriptive words and phrases such as "no sign of", "suggestion" and "significant upward trend" without the necessary quantitive evidence.
Of course I realise that government "forecasts" are much worse, with words such as "might" and "could" being sprinkled liberally throughout and I also realise that data analysis has to be "dumbed down" somewhat, while at the same time using some sort of graphic to illustrate the point, but such quantitive descriptions alone really do not help when trying to forecast future changes.
I would recommend that such "data analysis" articles, purporting to make forecasts, include at least the first differential, which can then be described to the readers as comparing whether the foot is already on the break or still on the accelerator.
NHS is now the Gates' Vaccination Service
No. The Oxford vaccine is not for profit. My advice, forget conspiracy theories, stay in the real world.
It might be not for profit, but still has his tentacles on it.
https://www.ovg.ox.ac.uk/publications/1148821
It might be not for profit
No. It IS not for profit. They can afford to develop it because of grants, from e.g. The Gates Fund.
