now on bbc news, it s time for panorama. tonight on panorama, hospitals under pressure as the impact of winter and covid bite. so the priority for the a&e team this evening will be making sure they are, keeping patients on the ambulances safe. the worry for us is the ones who haven t been seen yet the latest variant omicron is still sweeping the uk jc: do you think it was omicron that caused this. 7 maria: i my feeling is yes. coz i ve been fullyjabbed. i think what would i have been like if i hadn t have done that? it can be hard to find enough beds. they re under immense pressure again today?with this area being overfull we ve got patients waiting to be seen staff absences are taking their toll too. medical staff, nursing staff, our other support staff.
i got a cough which got worse and worse. and then the next morning my husband tried to get me up early to go to the bathroom. and he said i was totally unresponsive. do you think it was omicron that caused this, the new variant? my feeling is yes. cos i ve been fullyjabbed, we all have in, at home. i think what would i have been like if i hadn t have done that? the burden now is on the respiratory wards, which are full of patients. and the impact of omicron on staff is really being felt. our staffing levels have been very badly affected. that is medical staff, nursing staff, our other support staff. the infection is rife. 30% of our pharmacy staff is off. yesterday we had so manyjunior doctors go off because they were turning positive. the nhs is already
or quadrupled, should i say, very quickly. over the christmas period, hospital admissions of people with covid across the uk more than doubled. they are less unwell as compared to how unwell they were last year. we had 160, 170 patients at that stage. but we had so many more in intensive care. in intensive care, the number of seriously ill covid patients is also rising, but more slowly than last year. maria fletcher is recovering here after being taken ill just after christmas. i got a cough which got worse and worse. and then the next morning my husband tried to get me up early to go to the bathroom and he said i was totally unresponsive. do you think it was omicron that caused this, the new variant? my feeling is yes. because i have been fullyjabbed, we all have at home. i think, what would i have been
with ten others. now on bbc news, it s time for panorama. tonight on panorama, hospitals under pressure as the impact of winter and covid bite. so the priority for the a&e team this evening will be making sure they are, keeping patients on the ambulances safe. the worry for us is the ones who haven t been seen yet the latest variant 0micron is still sweeping the uk jc: do you think it was 0micron that caused this. ? maria: i my feeling is yes. coz i ve been fullyjabbed. i think what would i have been like if i hadn t have done that? it can be hard to find enough beds. they re under immense pressure again today?with this area being overfull we ve got patients waiting to be seen staff absences are taking their toll too. medical staff, nursing staff, our other support staff.
theit has fuelled the vaccination debate in serbia, where less than half of the country s population are fully vaccinated. so where does all this leaves the serbian government s vaccination campaign? from belgrade, our balkans correspondent guy de launey reports. this time last year serbia was leading the european race to vaccinate its people against coronavirus. while other countries were struggling for supplies, serbians could choose from four different covid jabs, but now the campaign s gone from plain sailing to being stuck in the doldrums. translation: we would vaccinate 5,000 or 6,000 people a day - at the belgrade fair. then it dropped to 2,000 during the summer, and in recent weeks the number has fallen drastically to 300 doses per day. all that means that only around half of serbians are fullyjabbed, and that s why the vaccine hesitant stance of novak djokovic isn t as controversial here as it is in australia. still, serbians who are getting jabbed are hoping the sporting icon