The NHS in Wales faced significant pressures over Christmas and new year due to the unusually high number of flu and respiratory illnesses, health secretary Jeremy Miles said on Tuesday. Mr Miles was speaking in the Senedd on Tuesday when he told members pressures were most visible for the Welsh Ambulance Service, which became so overwhelmed it declared a critical incident on December 30.
Mr Miles explained that despite planning, some parts of the NHS experienced a surge in demand due to a combination of cold weather, flu and other illnesses such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and norovirus. He reiterated concerns shared by the director of Public Health Wales last week that not enough people in Wales, including healthcare staff, were getting their flu jabs this winter.
“Uptake this year has been lower than expected and certainly lower than we would have liked,” Mr Miles said. “I continue to encourage all those eligible for a free NHS flu jab to have the vaccine, especially as high levels of flu are circulating in local communities.”
While chemists and doctors are trying to push the jab, flu vaccination uptake among those over the age of 65 is less than 70% across the country. The figure for health workers is at 27% across health boards – down from 33% last year.
Mr Miles said across December there was a spike in the number of people with flu in hospitals in Wales with numbers rising 18% during the Christmas week. The latest available data shows there are more than 900 people with flu, Covid and RSV in hospital beds in Wales – 20% more than in the same period last year.
In the period between December 19 and New Year’s Day there was a 19% increase in 999 calls for breathing problems, Mr Miles said, compared to the same period last year. He said the added complexities of triaging, assessing and discharging patients with respiratory infections has contributed to longer waiting times for admission resulting in congested wards and emergency departments.
The Welsh Ambulance Service said more than 340 calls were waiting to be answered at the time the critical incident was declared last month. More than half the trust’s ambulances were waiting to hand over patients outside hospitals at the time.
After the incident was stood down First Minister Eluned Morgan posted pictures of herself gifting chocolates to A&E staff during visits. Conservative leader in the Senedd Darren Millar said health professionals wanted “quality services not Quality Street”.
Baroness Morgan responded: “You’ve got very many elderly people coming in with respiratory issues and they can’t be discharged because there’s nobody there to provide the packages of care. During Christmas, when lots of people are off, that is more difficult to provide those packages of care.
“The key issue here is there are lots of people in hospital today who have been clinically optimised, they’ve been sorted out and they need to go home. But, the real issue is that we need to sort out social care, and a huge amount of work is being done on that by the health minister; we had that 50-day challenge where we worked out exactly, ‘What is the reason they’re still here?’, ‘Why are they still here?’. It’s not all about beds.”
Mr Miles said: “Over the coming days and weeks, I expect to see health boards and partners focus on the safe and speedy discharge of patients, building on the 50-day challenge, to further improve capacity to respond to winter pressures.” For the latest health and Covid news, sign up to our newsletter here