Scotland's NHS ready to cope with Covid surge

Scotland's NHS has "everything in place" to cope with a surge in demand in the weeks ahead, Health Secretary Jeane Freeman has said.

She spoke out amid projections in England that NHS capacity could be reached before Christmas as Covid numbers continue to surge, prompting the national lockdown south of the Border.

Staff at the NHS Louisa Jordan in Glasgow are on standby to take patients in the near future as admissions continue to rise in Scotland.

But Scotland has so far stopped short of a blanket approach to restrictions and Ms Freeman said today the Scottish Government does modelling about expected demand both now and for winter.

Health Secretary Jeane Freeman

Demand is currently "concentrated" in different parts of the country, but NHS regional boards have a system of "mutual aid" that allows them to assist each other in providing non-Covid care if this is required.

The Health Secretary said: "Louisa Jordan is ready to stand up to respond to Covid in one week.

"But at the moment it is assisting us greatly by providing a number of non-Covid services covering diagnostics, orthopaedics, dermatology and so on.

"So all of that work is underway on a constant basis and at my level and the First Minister look at this all the time to make sure that we have everything in place that we need.”

Ms Freeman added: “We already have in Scotland, in hospitals across the country, and with our national Procurement Service in their storage facilities, all the ventilators and associated supply that we need to quadruple our current capacity of ventilators."

The 93 patients in intensive care compares with around 150 at the height of the pandemic in spring, while the 1,200 patients in hospital with Covid comparing to around 1,500 from the May peak.

"We're not very far off getting back to that peak in terms of hospital admissions," First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said today.

"But these are figures we look at very, very carefully. They are lag indicators because of the life cycle of the virus, but they are figures we look at very carefully as we make our wider judgements about the steps we have to take."

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