Sussex hospitals: Unprecedented seven-day critical incident ends

NHS trusts across Sussex were in a critical incident for seven consecutive days

An unprecedented seven-day critical incident across hospitals in Sussex has ended.

Declaring a critical incident allowed the cancellation of non-emergency procedures to relieve pressure on A&E departments, particularly at the Royal County Hospital in Brighton.

A critical incident is still in place across the area run by the Surrey Heartlands Health and Care Partnership.

Managers say that situation is being reviewed on a daily basis.

Hospitals in Sussex are now in a state of "business continuity", NHS Sussex said in a statement. Planned operations and appointments will now resume, while some extra measures stay in place.

Measures that will continue in Sussex include recruiting more staff, increasing the use of virtual wards to allow some patients to be treated at home and finding capacity to treat children with strep A away from hospitals.

Patients are being asked to only use 999 and A&E services for serious or life-threatening emergencies.

Analysis

by Mark Norman, Health Correspondent, BBC South East

For the NHS across Sussex this has been one of, perhaps the most, challenging periods.

Many staff have told me they have never seen the health service struggle to the extent it has since before Christmas.

Huge demand from patients, Covid, flu and strep A have all contributed to every aspect of the health system being almost overwhelmed.

GPs, ambulance services, hospital A&E departments and social care services have all struggled and despite stepping back from critical incident status no-one is kidding themselves that everything is back to normal.

In fact, the fear is this is now the new normal.

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