To mark the anniversary of the first confirmed Covid patients being treated by the NHS, Sir Simon Stevens, NHS England chief executive, today paid tribute to NHS staff for their “extraordinary work in a year like no other”.
Since then, hospitals have treated more than 320,000 patients with Covid, with around one person with the virus admitted to critical care every thirty minutes.
NHS staff have had to transform hospitals and how they work to ensure that all those who could benefit from critical care received it, increasing critical care ‘surge capacity’ by around a half.
In total, 26,476 patients with Covid have needed the most intensive level of care since the first case was diagnosed.
And on the busiest day of the pandemic, on 23rd January 2021, there were a record 5,381 people receiving critical care – 65% higher than at any point in 2019 and 36% higher than in the first wave.
Millions more people have received NHS care and advice for coronavirus while staff continued to provide maternity, mental health, cancer and other urgent and emergency care.
Today, there are still more than 30,000 patients in hospital with Covid including more than 3,500 in beds with mechanical ventilation.
While caring for those with the virus, NHS staff are rolling out the largest vaccination programme in the health service’s history, administering more than 7 million vaccinations in just seven weeks.
NHS England chief executive, Sir Simon Stevens said: “On behalf of families and patients across the country, we thank staff across the NHS for their extraordinary work in a year like no other.
“The coronavirus pandemic is the greatest public health emergency in NHS history, but in the past 12 months the NHS has achieved things many would have thought impossible – from quarantine centres and Nightingale hospitals in a matter of days after the pandemic was declared, to expanding hospitals’ critical care capacity by 50%, developing new Covid treatments and services, and delivering the first vaccination outside of a clinical trial.
“It is the vaccination programme, the biggest in NHS history, combined with the prospect of new therapies and treatments that offer us hope for the future.
“Our brilliant NHS staff have been on the frontline of the intense and relentless battle against coronavirus, but no health service could cope with the virus alone. They are part of this country’s greatest peacetime mobilisation, so we also thank other key workers, particularly in the care sector, the hundreds of thousands of volunteers, tens of thousands of staff who returned, the student nurses and medical students who stepped up and our colleagues in the armed services.
“We are also hugely grateful to all those who have played their part in cutting infections and slowing the spread of the virus, which has undoubtedly saved many lives.”
