The South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS), which operates in six counties around London, announced early Wednesday that it had declared a critical incident “due to extreme pressure on our services”. Recent reports of pressure on health services threaten to overshadow ministers’ efforts to intimidate the government’s new health and social care contribution, which is set to raise billions of pounds in the NHS over the next three years. “If your situation is not life threatening or a serious emergency, then we will discuss your needs and give you advice. “If your call does not require an emergency ambulance response, then you may be asked to go to the hospital alone,” SCAS said. As of April 6, 16,587 hospital beds across the UK were occupied by patients with Covid-19, up 6 per cent last week. The number is close to the high of about 17,100 Covid-19 patients reached in January, caused by an increase in the original Omicron variant. However, almost three-fifths of patients receive treatment mainly for another medical problem.

Mark Ainsworth, SCAS’s director of operations, said the critical incident statement meant it could focus its resources on the most needy patients and “communicates the pressures we receive on patients and healthcare partners who can provide support”. The West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts, which represents six hospitals, told patients to attend accident and emergency departments when faced with “real, life-threatening situations”, warning of waiting more than 12 hours. Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth declared a critical incident on Wednesday. During a visit to a hospital in Hertfordshire on Wednesday, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “Everyone across the country knows someone waiting for cancer treatment or some kind of procedure that is vital to their health. “We have to give our doctors and nurses the means, the funding, to deal with it.” However, health workers warned that the latest increase, due to the Omicron BA.2 sub-variant, had put new pressure on services as the government lifted other restrictions on the coronavirus.

Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, said trusts across the UK were still under “enormous pressure”. “A very large number of hospital beds are occupied and, combined with staff absences and severe manpower shortages, this means that trusts can not recover from care delays as quickly as they would like,” he added. Dr Layla McCay, policy director at the NHS Confederation, said healthcare leaders “will urge the government to have a realistic discussion with the public about the current state of health care.” The NHS said staff “remain under significant pressure on many fronts as they face large numbers of ambulance calls, increasing the number of people in hospitals with Covid-19, while recent weekly data also show a sharp increase in the number of staff who are sick because of the virus “. “NHS teams across the country are working hard to provide as much routine care as possible, as well as to implement the spring reinforcement program,” he added.