‘We don’t have enough rooms to isolate’: NHS doctor reveals impact of rise in flu cases
As cases of flu rise sharply across the UK, the Guardian spoke to Amir Hassan, an emergency medicine consultant and the divisional medical director at Epsom and St Helier University hospitals NHS trust, who shared his views.“We’re seeing increased numbers of patients coming through, a lot of them with respiratory-type illnesses.It means we need to try to isolate these patients and treat them – so they’ll come in with shortness of breath, [and a] cough.And while the numbers are going up, we’re still getting the other patients coming in with falls and heart attacks and trauma.It puts pressure on the emergency department, and it puts pressure on the wards because you’re increasing the number of respiratory patients you’re managing.
The other problem we find, and I’m sure other hospitals find this as well, is that when you’ve got these respiratory cases, you need to try to isolate them as much as possible so you avoid spreading the virus to other patients,This winter is quite bad,It’s probably one of the worst we’ve had so far with the numbers of patients we’ve got coming in, and trusts will struggle differently depending on their infrastructure,My own trust is a very old hospital, with quite dated wards and architecture, which means we don’t have enough single rooms to actually isolate patients in,It’s at the level across most hospitals at the moment where corridor care has been normal.
The danger now is corridor care is normalised, and patients are coming in with respiratory infections, which makes it much more challenging to try to maintain your infection control.It is challenging.I would really recommend to patients, if they’ve got symptoms that would go with the flu or with the cold, to try to stay at home if possible.Do self care, go on to the NHS 111 app or the website.If not, they can always go to their GP or even go to their pharmacy.
In the vast majority of cases, managing the flu is really self-help.Just wait for things to settle down.But if you do need emergency care – you feel extremely short of breath or anything of concern – then, you know, we’re always there in the hospital to take care of people.It’s affecting all age groups.The vast majority are frail and elderly, because they have less respiratory reserve.
But we’re also getting some young patients coming in with the flu and [it’s] hitting them badly,Flu itself can be a killer,It can be a dangerous disease if it’s not treated appropriately,Elderly people will die, and some young people will die from this as well,If you are a high-risk individual, all I would say, and for everyone, is make sure you get your immunisations if you’re in one of those categories that has it for free – including school-age children – because then you decrease the risk to your friends and relatives.
The pressure builds up,First and foremost in the emergency departments, and then it goes around the wards,Everyone works really hard over the winter period and we expect winter is always going to be our busiest period, but it is especially hard,What you have to remember is that when the general public go down, a lot of our nurses and doctors and staff are going down as well,”
Green biotech firms to open factories at Grangemouth; Oracle shares tumble 15% after results disappoint – as it happened
Two green biotechnology firms have announced they will build new factories at Scotland’s Grangemouth site which will employ up to 460 people, in the first phase of projects to replace hundreds of jobs lost when the PetroIneos refinery closed down.The projects by MiAlgae, a start-up based in Edinburgh which uses whisky waste to make fish-free Omega 3 oils, and Celtic Renewables, which uses whisky and agricultural byproducts to make chemicals, have won £10m in funding from the Scottish and UK governments to build new plants at Grangemouth.MiAlgae’s founder and chief executive Douglas Martin said their Omega 3 plant would start production in the second quarter of 2026, employing 75 people. It uses whisky wash, a byproduct, of whisky production to produce plant-based Omega 3 for pet food and fish farm feed.Martin said their modular plant, which has been given £3m by the UK and Scottish governments, can be rapidly expanded to eventually create up to 310 jobs
US is the best place for drug companies to invest, says boss of London-based GSK
The chief executive of GSK has declared that the US is the best place for pharmaceutical companies to invest.Emma Walmsley said the US led the world in launches of drugs and vaccines and, alongside China, was the best market for business development.She is the latest boss of a leading UK drugmaker to talk up business opportunities on the other side of the Atlantic, after AstraZeneca’s Pascal Soriot hailed the “vital importance of the US”.The UK government, which has been trying to strengthen the pharmaceutical sector, confirmed on Wednesday that the proportion of revenues from new medicine sales that companies need to pay back to the NHS would fall next year – from 22.5% to under 15%
Disney to invest $1bn in OpenAI, allowing characters in Sora video tool
Walt Disney has announced a $1bn equity investment in OpenAI, enabling the AI startup’s Sora video generation tool to use its characters.Users of Sora will be able to generate short, user-prompted social videos that draw on more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters as part of a three-year licensing agreement between OpenAI and the entertainment giant.The agreement – a landmark deal amid intense anxiety in Hollywood over the impact of artificial intelligence on the future of entertainment – will not cover talent likenesses or voices.Bob Iger, Disney’s CEO, hailed a deal which paired his firm’s “iconic stories and characters” with OpenAI’s AI technology. It will place “imagination and creativity directly into the hands of Disney fans in ways we’ve never seen before”, he claimed
EU watchdogs raid Temu’s Dublin HQ in foreign subsidy investigation
Temu’s European headquarters in Dublin have been raided by EU regulators investigating a potential breach of foreign subsidy regulations.The Chinese online retailer, which is already in the European Commission’s spotlight over alleged failures to prevent illegal content being sold on its app and website, was raided last week without warning or any subsequent publicity.“We can confirm that the commission has carried out an unannounced inspection at the premises of a company active in the e-commerce sector in the EU, under the foreign subsidies regulation,” a commission spokesperson said on Thursday.Temu was approached for comment.Its headquarters are on St Stephen’s Green, one of Dublin’s most prestigious addresses
No guarantee tobacco tax cut would lure Australian smokers from illegal trade and raise more revenue, report says
Slashing the tobacco excise might not be enough to lure smokers back to legal cigarettes and could even widen the multibillion-dollar hole blown in the budget by the booming illicit trade, new research shows.The analysis from the e61 Institute comes as Jim Chalmers revealed next week’s midyear fiscal update will reveal an extra $12.7bn in unanticipated spending, including an additional $6.3bn in higher than expected disaster relief payments.The treasurer said “the biggest job … has been making room for unavoidable pressures and payments without a substantial deterioration in the bottom line”
Fed cuts interest rates by a quarter point amid apparent split over US economy
The US Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday that it was cutting interest rates by a quarter point for the third time this year, as the embattled central bank appeared split over how best to manage the US economy.The Fed chair, Jerome Powell, has emphasized unity within the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the board of Fed leaders that sets interest rates. But the nine-to-three vote to lower rates to a range of 3.5% to 3.75% was divisive among the committee that tends to vote in unanimity
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