Covid-19: Hospital ITU at capacity with mainly unvaccinated patients

Registrar anaesthetist Graham Walkden said young unvaccinated people were occupying most of the beds in intensive care

Doctors have warned hospital wards are being "brought to their knees" largely by unvaccinated Covid-19 patients.

Gloucestershire Royal Hospital said its Intensive Therapy Unit (ITU) had reached capacity.

It said the number of patients with Covid in the hospital was lower than at this time last year, but it had more patients in its intensive therapy unit.

Intensive care doctors have urged people to have the Covid-19 vaccination "because it does make a difference".

Intensive Care Consultant Dave Windsor urged people to have their vaccines

Intensive care consultant Dr Dave Windsor, said: "Please, please, get your vaccine, because it does make a difference.

"At the moment, we have a six-bedded area in our intensive care for those needing critical care, but we also have a respiratory high care area too and plenty of ward space.

"But obviously, that facility is needed for Covid patients and isn't available for other patients, which is why we are seeing such huge demand this time."

Doctors at the hospital said the intensive care wards were "at capacity"

Windsor said the hospitals had "been brought to their knees".

But he added a large proportion treated had "done the right thing and got vaccinated".

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Doctors said they were "just about coping" with the numbers of Covid-19 patients

Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust anaesthetic trainee Cima Dailami, said the hospital's intensive care wards were working "flat-out".

"The Covid patients we've got on ITU are largely unvaccinated. So that's the real clincher," she said.

"That can be quite demoralising for us to see, because we really are working at maximum. We're needing to do everything we can, that's tough.

"I'm sure you must've seen all of the ambulances waiting outside.

"Our hospital is pretty full so when you have patients coming in there is no where else for them to go."

She said the ITU ward she had been working on was also busy with non-Covid patients.

Correction 31 January 2022: A set of quotes attributed were mistakenly credited to Graham Walkden, but were from Dave Windsor. We have removed claims in those quotes about the percentage of people in intensive care who are unvaccinated as we cannot substantiate them. The headline was also amended to make clear it was the ICU that was at capacity, not the hospital as a whole, as the original headline implied.

Note 12 May 2022: A subsequent complaint to the BBC's Executive Complaints Unit was partly upheld. The finding can be viewed here.