Not Good

[Pathca]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59823652
The bad news is they are getting these field hospitals ,probably with military staff ,to cope with a prospective surge,the good news is one of them is my hospital so I should get my hours
It was noticeable after a few days off ,looking at the A&E whiteboard many more Red patients and a lot younger than a couple of weeks ago,as my colleague said “They’ve been out enjoying themselves over Christmas “

[Hotrodder]

And now medical staff will have to pay the price.

[Sparkle]

@Pathca please make sure you stay safe especially as you've not been well recently.

[niemeyjt]

And what could possibly go wrong with lots of mixing on New Year's Eve, with numbers swelled by Welsh and Scots not being allowed to celebrate in their own countries?

[Pathca]

@Pathca please make sure you stay safe especially as you've not been well recently.

Thanks @Sparkle I do my best I am supposed to work in none Covid areas,but that doesn’t always work out and you still suffer the knock on effects high demand etc

[p4psb]

I think the positive numbers in the UK are not being fully disclosed, or they are not doing so many tests as they seem to be difficult to find.

[Pathca]

I think from what I am hearing it is the test availability that is the issue

[MAD87]

We (10 of us) were tested yesterday by our older daughter prior to a family fête that should have had 14 attendees - all negative. Our younger daughter and her children were isolating in Grenoble as "cas contact".
In passing, testing daughter said that almost all tests were currently for Delta. 2 of her patients in the last week had Covid, as had many of our grandchildren's classmates in the last month. We are in one of the least-infected areas (Haute-Vienne) but it could be that the newly-infected are Omicron-infected. Does it actually matter which, I wonder? Most folk here are wearing masks (even outdoors), which is the 1st line of defence against any form of the virus.

[exile]

I think from what I am hearing it is the test availability that is the issue

That in itself is probably an over-simplification of the situation.

There is certainly a shortage of LFT home test kits. There is however a major problem in getting PCR tests at testing stations. Part of that is again perhaps due to a shortage of kits but equally a part of that is that the staff to take the tests and more so the staff to analyse the samples are not available in sufficient numbers. Holidays will have an impact but so will staff shortages due to required self isolation.

[Blaze]

The day before yesterday, we had over 500 people having PCRs at our vaccination centre. Yesterday we had over 600. I was on reception yesterday and nearly everyone passing through were symptomatic or had tested positive in an antigenic test. We all had to wear protective gear and I had to keep telling people to stand back and not get too close !
The PCR swabs are sent to the lab for analysis and I don't know at the moment which variant is dominant.
We're accepting all people without RDV who are cas contact, symptomatic or have had a positive antigene test. It's startling to see how rapidly the number of infected people is rising.

Our department has over 80% vaccinated at least once. Most are coming for their third dose, but the number of 1st dosers is going up. We are making a special effort to welcome them and have managed to persuade several who changed their minds about being done to stay on.

@Pathca
@exile
The labs here are working virtually round the clock to get the results out. The number of people taken for PCRs is also dependent on the number of people available to do the "cotton bud" thing.