Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin ICS system critical incident remains in place.

The incident is in relation to increasing numbers of patients with covid in our hospitals and extremely high levels of staff sickness across our health and care system along with high levels of service demand across the sector.

There are three issues:

1. We currently have 135 covid positive patients in hospital. This is causing significant pressure as we seek to care for and look after these poorly patients. Although this number is starting to decrease very slowly, we have, in the last two weeks, seen the highest number of Covid positive patients since the pandemic began
2. We have an extremely high number of staff off from work with covid and other health related issues across the health and care system. Staff sickness overall is circa 7%, with Covid accounting for approx. 3% of this, peaking earlier this month at 8.6%. This is impacting on our ability to operate services as we are unable to staff them safely.
3. Demand for services across the sector remains high

As a consequence of these challenges, we have ambulance delays at our acute hospitals, have a number of GP practices running on their business continuity plans, and have needed to cancel the majority of our routine activity.

Safe discharge of patients is also proving challenging, despite the continued hard work and dedicated focus of our community and local authority partners. There are currently 29 care homes closed due to covid outbreaks in Shropshire and 7 in Telford & Wrekin. This is a significant proportion of our care homes. The pressures of staff sickness and demand for services is being felt across all parts our system and this includes our community, mental health and social care services.

We are asking staff on leave to contact work to see if they are required.

We are also asking the public to help us by getting vaccinated or boosted against Covid-19, choosing to wear masks in crowded settings, practicing good hand hygiene and by staying at home, if you test positive.

We further ask patients to seek alternatives to attending A&E where appropriate. A&E remains open for emergencies and urgent care needs.

We have put additional GP appointments in place over the weekend and are asking patients to plan ahead any for medication they may need for the holiday period to avoid urgent requests and to utilise the support pharmacies can offer with health-related queries and ailments

We are doing everything we can as a health and care system to rapidly improve the position and we apologise for any negative impact this has on an individual’s experience of our local health and care system.

For further information for the public on which services they should use, please refer to press release: Health and care services in Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin continue to face unprecedented pressure (stwics.org.uk)