With peak yet to come, Europe’s healthcare groans

GBNEWS24DESK//

UK strikes deal with private sector as pressure builds on NHS

Spain mulls loosening Covid tracking system to limit absences

Infection rates surge among European health workers

Europe’s healthcare systems are being strained once again by the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus over the holiday period, with large numbers of key staff ill or self-isolating and experts predicting the peak of infections is yet to come.

Despite early studies showing a lower risk of severe disease or hospitalisation from Omicron compared to the previously-dominant Delta variant, healthcare networks across Spain, Britain, Italy and beyond have found themselves in increasingly desperate circumstances.

Britain put its biggest private health companies on high alert on Monday to deliver key treatments including cancer surgery should unsustainable levels of hospitalisations or staff absences overwhelm National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in England.

The country also began deploying military personnel to support hospitals on Friday due to record Covid-19 cases.

“Omicron means more patients to treat and fewer staff to treat them,” NHS Medical Director Professor Stephen Powis said in a statement.

In the United States, hospitals are postponing elective surgeries to free up staff and beds, while Spain’s primary healthcare network is so strained that on the penultimate day of 2021 authorities in the northeastern region of Aragon authorised the reincorporation of retired medical workers and nurses.

“The exponential increase in cases means primary care can perform neither their contact tracing and vaccination campaign duties adequately, nor their ordinary activities,” the authorities said in a statement.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Monday it may be time to use different parameters to track the pandemic, confirming a report from El Pais newspaper.