Medics pulled from surgery backlog to deal with emergency care crisis as A&E 'struggles' with patient numbers, says Greater Manchester hospital

Nearly 1,000 patients with Covid-19 are being treated on Greater Manchester hospital wards, while the region's emergency departments 'struggle to assess' the high numbers of patients arriving with serious conditions. 'Fridays are the new Mondays' for A&E demand as medics have been taken away from dealing with the Covid surgery backlog for a number of months to help with a daily crisis in emergency units at one local NHS hospital.

Meanwhile, NHS bosses say Covid-related demand from patients - and staff absence also caused by the virus - are adding to the ‘significant strain’ felt by clinicians as they also try to recover huge treatment backlogs, following ambitious targets set by Secretary of State for Health, Sajid Javid.

The number of beds occupied by Covid patients across England topped 16,000 at the end of last week, close to the previous peak seen in mid-January this year. There are a rising number who are admitted for something else and are then discovered to have coronavirus, known as ‘incidental’ Covid cases, although the proportion of those cases being treated primarily for Covid continues to fall.

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There were 971 beds occupied by patients with a confirmed case of Covid across seven NHS hospital trusts serving Greater Manchester as of Tuesday (April 5), the latest NHS England figures show. That was up from 827 the previous week and 638 seven days before that, although it was still below the 1,289 recorded on January 11, around the time numbers peaked nationally.

Across two of the trusts, there were 14 mechanical ventilation beds occupied by Covid-19 patients on April 5. The majority (six)