It’s been reported that there were more patients in hospitals in the last week of January than at any other point so far this winter, with the number of Norovirus cases in hospitals seeing a continued rise. It was also reported that around 96% of adult hospital beds were occupied at this time, which is a record for this winter.
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00:00The health system is always going to be under pressure during the winter period. It's a
00:06sort of inevitable consequence of the fact that there's lots of bugs going around and
00:09people get down with sort of ailments that, you know, perhaps in the summer it's not quite
00:13so much of a problem. It's certainly sort of one of the things that the current government
00:16came into power saying that they were going to improve, but hey, you know, it's going
00:20to take a long time and a lot of money before we ever sort of see the fact that we can sort
00:25of roll up at A&E or our doctors, people getting to hospital and then effectively being sort
00:30of stuck in a queue in the back of an ambulance perhaps, or even in the sort of the corridor
00:34and people being treated in the corridor and even, you know, being sort of, having to sort
00:38of stay in hospital corridors. I mean, it's obviously sort of reprehensible in many ways,
00:43but of course the sort of the health system, you know, what can they do? They have very
00:46limited resources and can only sort of work with what they've got.
00:51With neurovirus cases at high levels, Amy Douglas from the UK Health Security Agency
00:55said it was essential for the public to take precautions against neurovirus, which was
01:00at levels said to be way above what they are usually seen as. She said it's important to
01:04take measures to avoid passing the infection. Neurovirus can be treated by keeping hydrated
01:09and resting.
01:10I know, of course, we've also got the issue that sort of the staff, where do they come
01:15from? You know, we're in the sort of the midst of sort of the, another sort of debate about
01:19immigration, which will, I suspect, not go away this side of the election. And we have
01:23to sort of bring in staff from elsewhere. You sort of can build hospitals if you could
01:27afford it, and then you've got to staff them. So there's a big, big problem. But dare I
01:32say it, you know, I know sort of people who sort of live in sort of Europe. And of course,
01:35if you go to your local hospital, you do not get treatment until you sort of pay. So I
01:40think we're at the sort of the stage now, and it may have to be a sort of Labour government
01:44that makes that sort of really difficult decision of how we're actually going to sort of fund
01:47the health service going forward, because surely we cannot continue in this crisis that
01:52we seem to be perpetually in.