Flanked by public health officials, the U.K. Health Secretary painted a bleak picture of the current state of the pandemic in Britain.
Instead, doctors and scientists are warning that with infections rising, there is potential for COVID to add to the winter burdens of an already stretched health service that has faced pressures even in pre-pandemic times."This time it genuinely does feel different," Siva Anandaciva, the chief analyst at the King's Fund, an independent health think tank, told ABC News."I think that's because there are a lot of familiar pressures that you always have ...
"COVID's almost like an accelerant on a fire," he said."The NHS has always struggled over the winter, and these are pressures that are spread more wildly... It is a problem with COVID, but more fundamentally some of the demand for care coming back after a pause in services and also crucially some of the resourcing issues that have long plagued the NHS. Not having enough staff, not having enough resources.
Facing pressure this winter, the government has announced new funding for the NHS, but it could be years before the health service begins to function at pre-pandemic levels, according to Anandaciva. Spector was once critical of the government's approach for"underreacting, then overreacting" to the pandemic with successive lockdowns, but now says he now doesn't understand some of the inaction.
"It's complacency to think that this, you know, this isn't going to get worse," he said."I haven't heard of anyone who says it's going to get better next week. So that's why I can't understand why introducing some simple measures that don't cost the economy anything, only have a political cost can't be implemented."