Sir Simon Stevens has thanked NHS staff for all their hard work during the health service’s “toughest year” ever.
The NHS chief executive praised nurses, doctors, therapists and countless other NHS workers for their response to the coronavirus pandemic and also paid tribute to carers, volunteers and care home staff in a New Year message.
In a message recorded at an NHS vaccination centre, Sir Simon also said that the COVID immunisation programme, the biggest in the health service’s history, was a source of greater “hope” for the year ahead.
The message comes as the NHS prepares to significantly further expand COVID vaccination in January as additional supply becomes available, building on what has been the fastest vaccine deployment in the NHS’s history.
Sir Simon said that coronavirus meant 2020 “has probably been the toughest year most of us can remember”.
“That is certainly true across the health service where we have been responding to the worst pandemic in a century,” he said.
“Many of us have lost family, friends, colleagues and – at a time of year when we would normally be celebrating – a lot of people are understandably feeling anxious, frustrated and tired.”
With COVID cases rising across this country, as they are across Europe, the NHS was “back in the eye of the storm”.
Colleagues in local NHS services across the country end the year needing to look after even more severely ill hospitalised coronavirus patients than during the first wave national peak in April, further adding to pressure on staff and frontline services.
However, Sir Simon said: “That’s not the whole story of the past year.
“Sometimes the worst of circumstances bring out the best in people.
“We have certainly seen that in my colleagues across the health service – the fantastic intensive care nurses and doctors, the paramedics, the therapists, the porters, the cleaners, the entire team across the NHS who have so brilliantly looked after 200,000 coronavirus patients and many others with all the other conditions the health service is here to care for.
“As they have done so, that has been boosted by the superb work of neighbours and volunteers and carers and care home staff.”
Advances in medical science had also “quietly” continued during 2020, with new treatments for cystic fibrosis and cancer as well as the first treatment for COVID which was developed through research in the NHS.
However, Sir Simon said the “biggest breakthrough” was vaccines for coronavirus, which the NHS was the first health service in the world to deliver outside of a trial.
“That, perhaps, provides the biggest chink of hope for the year ahead,” he said.
“But that will only be possible thanks once again to the dedication and the commitment of countless NHS staff – our brilliant GPs, pharmacists, nurses and many many others.
“Therefore now is the right time, I believe, on behalf of the whole country to record our enormous debt of gratitude and our huge thanks.”
