Seriously ill patients are having to wait up to 30 hours for a hospital bed in London, with a major incident being declared in the capital as the NHS buckles under the strain of rising Covid infections.
The London Ambulance Service (LAS) has told hospitals that “category three” patients, whose condition is considered urgent but not immediately life-threatening, now face long delays at all stages of the admissions process, from the initial call to 111 to being finally admitted.
This includes waiting up to two hours for the call to be passed to 999, 10 to 12-hour waits for an ambulance and similar waits in the vehicle or a hospital’s casualty unit before being admitted to a bed.
– Pfizer vaccine: 100,000 doses ‘thrown away’ after faulty PHE guidance, doctors claim
More than 100,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine may have been thrown away because of incorrect guidance by Public Health England, it has been revealed.
Instructions issued when the vaccine was being produced in December said that five doses could be obtained from each vial, but was revised by PHE on Jan 4 to allow for “administration of a sixth dose if obtainable”.
The Department for Health and Social Care said that the updated guidance had been issued on Dec 17, made available in a pack called “information for UK healthcare professionals”.
However, it is understood that some healthcare staff were unaware of the changes.
Government figures show that between Dec 8 and Dec 20, 600,000 people received the Pfizer vaccine in the UK.
This means that if there was an extra dose in each vial, there would be an extra 120,000 shots not used.
