of a surge in covid patients. but there s concern about who will staff them. we would prefer that the government take steps to avoid needing to use that extra surge capacity, purely because there just aren t the number of staff needed to safely provide the care for any patients that are requiring care, and that is where the priority needs to be, to ensure we ve got staff to safely care for people that need care. eight nightingale units will be set up in hospital grounds to care for around 100 covid patients each, and hospital admissions are now rising sharply in the uk, almost doubling in england in the past week. and that follows several weeks of soaring infections, reaching record highs. but many people are still finding it hard to get tested. we thought we would come to the local pharmacy to see if they ve got any lateral flow tests. but you don t need to go in to see that they re out of stock. so let s try this one.
capacity being overwhelmed. the third is a staffing crisis, not having enough staff to be able to run essential services. at the moment, the only one of those that isn t a current problem is the icy you capacity, probably because we don t know where we will go with that with this variant. the main concern we have about setting up nightingale units is the staffing of them, there isn t any other staff waiting to be deployed to these units. they will have to come from existing units and services, therefore those services which are already really struggling to maintain the services because of the soaring levels of sickness, largely as a result of covert among health care workers, their display hanging on to maintain their services and they will now be asked to deploy some of those staff to these new sites. ~ . , ., ,
meanwhile, coronavirus surge hubs are being set up at nhs at hospitals in england to deal with a potential increase in admissions, caused by record daily cases of the 0micron coronavirus variant. eight sites will be able to treat around 100 patients each. at the same time, the health secretary, sajid javid, says the supply of lateral flow tests will be tripled injanuary and february, in a bid to combat shortages. here s our health correspondent, sophie hutchinson. st george s hospital in south west london, where workers started to build a nightingale hub. it s one of eight hospitals in england which will have these temporary units, aimed at caring for around 100 covid patients. there s great concern within the nhs and within government now that the number of cases is growing so fast that we have to plan for a scenario whereby the nhs cannot, in its current format, cope with those cases. i think the big concern is where do the staff come from to man those beds?
the start of building work on the next wave of nightingale hubs. this one is at st george s hospital in south west london. the government says it is a contingency measure, in case of a surge in covid patients. but there is concern about who will staff them. we would prefer that the government take steps to avoid needing to use that extra surge capacity, purely because there just aren t the number of staff needed to safely provide the care for any patients that are required to requiring care, and that is where the priority needs to be, to ensure we have staff to safely care for people that need care. eight nightingale units will be set up in hospital grounds to care for around 100 covid patients each, and hospital admissions are now rising sharply in the uk. almost doubling in england in the past week. and that follows several weeks
hospital in south west london. the government says it s a contingency measure in case of a surge in covid patients, but there s concern about who will staff them. we would prefer that the government take steps to avoid needing to use that extra surge capacity, purely because there just aren t the number of staff needed to safely provide the care for any patients that are requiring care, and that s with the priority needs to be, to ensure that we ve got staff to safely care for people that need care. eight nightingale units will be set up in hospital grounds to care for around 100 covid patients each. and hospital admissions are now rising sharply in the uk, almost doubling in england in the past week. and that follows several weeks of soaring infections reaching record highs, but many people are still finding it hard to get tested.