NHS trusts declare critical incidents due to ‘exceptionally high demands’ in A&E | Hospitals

A number of NHS trusts have declared critical incidents due to “exceptionally high demands” in emergency departments with a patient at one hospital forced to wait 50 hours to be admitted to a ward.

Hospitals in Northamptonshire, Cornwall, Liverpool, Hampshire, Birmingham and Plymouth have declared critical incidents.

East Sussex Hospitals Trust announced it is temporarily limiting visiting to one visitor per patient per day to reduce the impact of flu.

It said in a statement: “This includes those accompanying people waiting in our emergency department.

“Exemptions apply to end-of-life care, our special care baby unit and when visiting children under 16. Additional visitors will be permitted on compassionate grounds on a case-by-case basis for all of our other services.”

East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust also declared the first critical incident in its history due to a combination of “significant patient demand, pressure within local hospitals and flooding”.

The health secretary, Wes Streeting, has said he feels “ashamed” at the experiences of some NHS patients, admitting that some are being taken to hospital “to die” because the right care is not available.

He said he felt “emotional” hearing about long waits and patients being passed from ambulance to ambulance, and also acknowledged that flu is a “big problem” and was causing “extraordinary pressure” in hospitals.

Speaking on LBC Radio, Streeting said: “It breaks my heart because … I’ve seen this when I’ve been shadowing the ambulance service on ride outs – we are taking people in ambulances to emergency departments to die because then there isn’t the right care available at the right time in the right place, including end-of-life care.”

The overall weekly hospital admission rate for influenza increased to 14.09 per 100,000 population in the week ending 29 December 2024, compared with 10.69 per 100,000 the previous week, and 8.72 per 100,000 the week before that.

Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told the PA news agency: “This flu season is not an outlier, but the problem is our emergency care system is so overwhelmed and fragile that a normal flu season – which is what we’ve got at the moment – is creating severe operational difficulties.”

He added: “It is a significant flu outbreak, but the problem is there’s just no capacity to deal with it. So it is really a straw that is breaking the camel’s back.”

The Royal Liverpool University Hospital remains in a critical incident state following an announcement by NHS University Hospitals of Liverpool Group on Monday evening.

The longest time one patient waited to be admitted to a ward at the hospital was 50 hours, it is understood.

Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust declared critical incidents on Tuesday followed by University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and NHS Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board.