BRADFORD’s hospital chief has spoken of the winter pressures faced in the NHS as the spectre of Omicron looms. 

While Covid patient numbers are hugely down on what they were last year, the new Covid-19 variant has prompted fear and anxiety of what might be ahead. 

Health Secretary Sajid Javid has warned that the number of UK Omicron infections could hit one million by the end of the month.

He has insisted the new measures are necessary to “build our collective defences” through the vaccination programme in the face of the rapidly-spreading variant.

Mel Pickup, chief executive of Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said this winter has echoes of two years ago, when reports of the virus first began to emerge.

Covid patient numbers at the Trust fluctuate, though are always high enough to fill more than one ward, said Ms Pickup. As of Friday, the figure stood at 37. 

She told the Telegraph & Argus: “Now we are all waiting to understand what Omicron might do to that.

“At the same time, we have had this really strong desire to try wherever we can, to use the resources we’ve got, that aren’t deployed for emergency or Covid patients to start clearing the backlog of patients that have been waiting for treatment.

“Our imperative at the moment is to do three things; try and manage Covid safely, try and prepare for what Omicron might give us in that regard; deal with the urgent and emergency pressures that are normally a manifestation of winter while at the same time, still trying to reduce waiting times.

“It’s incredibly difficult because any pressure in any one part of that has an impact on the other bits. At the moment, that’s really, really hard. 

“Time will tell whether the impact of Covid has meant that more people have not had early cancers spotted, have not come forward with symptoms, have therefore come forward late and then had to wait to longer for treatment and when the treatment is done, it’s therefore less effective and then more people die for non-Covid reasons. 

“We don’t want anybody to suffer unnecessarily and to die unnecessarily because of an absence of an ability to access our services, which is why we are trying our best to use everything we have got to do a bit of everything that’s required of us.

“We are trying our utmost, but when push comes to shove around the decisions that we make, the things that are going to save lives and limit really debilitating consequences for patients will take priority.”

She added: “There’s a degree of fear about Omicron because so little about it is known. 

“We are not sure whether Omicron is going to be as bad, not as bad, or worse than the original Covid-19 disease.”

Her assessment in a worst case scenario is the Trust would be taken back two years.

She said: “This time we would probably know more about what to expect and we would be better prepared for that.”

However, Ms Pickup said it could, in the most bleak picture, be a scenario where more people are affected, more people get sicker and more people require admission to hospital which would then impact on things like elective surgery, where the patient does not require immediate medical attention.

She said: “Everybody who has worked here over the last 12 months and those, like me, who have worked in the NHS for longer, know that winter is always a very difficult time.

"The last two years have taught us that Covid can make a winter almost an impossible time and therefore it is with some degree of anxiety that we face the next few months, but confident that the people who work in this organisation will do the extra mile, they will do everything that they possibly can, I know because I’ve seen it over the last couple of years, to continue to provide the best service they can.

“But the best right now isn’t going to be like the best two years ago in August, when our waiting times where were we wanted them to be and our staffing levels were where we wanted them to be.

“The public just need to appreciate that you can only do what you can do under the circumstances, but be assured it will be our very best and in order to do that, we are furiously planning and thinking of every initiative we can put in place to make that as good as it can be.”

Ms Pickup said people have to make “good, responsible decisions” and spoke of the importance of the vaccine.

“What we do know is the best defence against Omicron, we think at the moment, is to have vaccination and be vaccinated and that way, even if it’s more transmissible and you do get it, we would like to hope and expect that the impact of it would be less severe,” she said.

“The fact we’ve got as few patients, still more than we would like, but as few patients as we have now compared to before is because of the impact of the vaccine. What I know of those 30-odd patients, a large proportion of those will never have had the vaccine.

“The number of those patients who when they land in our A&E department or respiratory ward who say ‘can I have the vaccine now, I wish I’d had the vaccine’.

“It’s really, really upsetting for the people here who know that the vaccine can work and does work really effectively.

“They’ve had it themselves, I’ve had it, I’ve encouraged all my family to have it, as clinicians, as leaders, as people who work in hospitals, if there was a conspiracy theory, why would we have it ourselves?”

Ms Pickup added: “Our uptake of vaccine among our staff is 90-odd per cent. Not every member of staff has had the vaccine and indeed that will cause us issues come April because it’s now mandated for frontline healthcare staff to have the vaccine.

“Some of those people, even within our organisation, even with everything they’ve seen, still subscribe to the same fears, anxieties and conspiracy theories.

“All we can do is the same thing they are trying to do with the public at large which is to try and give them some confidence and allay their anxieties and have meaningful conversations that are based on fact, based on the scientific evidence, based on what we know from what the data tells us about the efficacy of the vaccine and the fact that it doesn’t cause all these other issues and problems that people fear it does. 

“It’s really, really deeply frustrating and upsetting to see something that is avoidable, if people take the vaccine, manifest and the absolute havoc that ensues because of that. 

“Not just on the individuals, but losing a pivotal family member. We’ve had instances here where we’ve had out of a family of five, four of them all in, two of them in ITU at the same time. It’s inconceivable that people are willing to let that happen when it’s avoidable. It really is very saddening to think that for something as simple as a vaccine that is safe, that is proven to be safe, we could avoid so much suffering.”