Covid-19

Andy Carter Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell), I started to write my speech last week, and given the announcements over the weekend, I thought I might need to redraft it. But having listened to this debate and to the statement from the Prime Minister, I have actually made very few changes.

As the final Back-Bench contributor to the debate, I want to talk about my local hospital. I know that the Minister for Patient Safety, Mental Health and Suicide Prevention has personal experience of Warrington Hospital—she started her career there as a trainee nurse, so she knows those wards better than any of us here. Warrington, alongside Liverpool, is at the forefront in dealing with the autumn surge. It is one of the busiest hospitals in the country with covid admissions. I want my colleagues in this House to know about the pressures that clinicians are facing today, tonight and tomorrow.

The medical staff and support staff in Warrington are straining every sinew to cope with the increase in covid-19 cases that they have seen in the last few weeks. In April, during the height of the first wave, the hospital had a peak of 121 covid patients. Today it has 149, and there are a further 23 patients awaiting test results in hospital. It is forecast to exceed 300 patients over the next three weeks. Given that hospitalisation often follows two weeks after infection, the changes being made from Thursday will probably have little impact on shifting the course of those numbers.

One of the senior clinicians at Warrington Hospital described to me earlier today the current situation. He said that it was a “winter crisis on steroids,” and we have not even got into winter yet. Critical care beds have already been escalated to 18, and there is an ability to extend further to 30, but doing that will have an impact on the hospital’s other work. It surprised me a little when he talked about the hospital’s other work. There are currently 183 other patients receiving care for urgent conditions such as cancer. The work of Warrington’s NHS remains at around 80% of normal workload.

The prevalence of the virus in Warrington is still increasing, and as the virus spreads through the community it also spreads into the healthcare workforce. Having sufficient nurses and doctors to treat not only someone suffering from covid-19, but somebody who has trauma from a car crash, or who has the frightening diagnosis of a tumour or who has just suffered a stroke is just as important. The benefit of having a national health service is that across a region where one hospital is busy, another can take up the strain and help out, but sadly, we are seeing pressures right across the region. There is little bed space in any of the hospitals in the north-west and there is a real challenge for doctors and nurses to staff those wards.

The next four weeks are an opportunity to address contact tracing across the UK before the surge we are seeing in Warrington extends further, and I welcome the support that has been given to local councils to drive efforts around local tracing. I can also understand why people working in contact tracing find it really difficult. I have been through the process of isolation. I have had the calls and I know how difficult it is to understand when you are talking to somebody in one town and you are in another.

Finally, I reiterate the point I made to the Prime Minister earlier today. The economic consequences of the lockdown will be very difficult, coming at such a crucial time ahead of Christmas when businesses make the revenue that they use to see them through the early part of next year. Protecting lives and livelihoods have to go hand in hand and I regret deeply that we are seeing another lockdown, but reluctantly, I feel that we do need this.