PRIME Minister Boris Johnson will lead a Downing Street press conference at 5pm after a number of hospital trusts in England declared critical incidents linked to Covid pressures.
Johnson will be joined by England’s chief medical officer Sir Chris Whitty and chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance, but is not expected to announce any Covid measures.
Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, told Sky News earlier that approximately half a dozen hospitals across England have declared critical incidents in the last five days.
He said the status enables hospitals to get assistance from nearby hospitals and other NHS trusts.
He said: “It is a sensible, planned thing to do to ensure that trust can carry on providing the services that it needs to provide, particularly the critical and essential services.”
Some estimates say that up to a quarter of NHS staff could be off work with coronavirus, however Hopson said the data does not suggest this to be the case.
To tackle absences, Whitehall departments are considering whether military aid might be required.
Downing Street said departments were considering whether military aid to the civil authorities (Maca) requests would be useful, but there was no blanket requirement to do so.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “All departments have been asked to look at how they would mitigate against large-scale absences across their relevant workforces, up to 25%.
“In some circumstances that might require making a Maca request, a military aid request, in other circumstances it might not.
“There is no blanket requirement for military aid.”
Meanwhile, Downing Street acknowledged the NHS faced a “difficult time” but insisted the current level of coronavirus restrictions in England was “the right course”. England is the only UK nation not to have brought in measures to tackle the rapid spread of the virus, which has reached record levels.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “At the moment we don’t see any data to suggest that further restrictions would be the right approach, given we know it is important to strike the right balance between protecting lives and livelihoods.
“There are significant mitigations in place for our NHS to help them in what’s going to be a very challenging winter.”
The “public should be under no doubt” that it “will be a difficult time for our NHS”.
The spokesman added: “We believe this is the right course, asking people to work from home, the use of the Covid pass and of course, most importantly, the booster programme.”
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