Midlands-wide coronavirus assistance

Shropshire's main hospitals helped some of their Midlands neighbours by taking in coronavirus patients when they ran out of space, health bosses have confirmed.

Clinical Commissioning Group chairman Julian Povey said intensive care wards in Birmingham, Nottingham, Stoke-on-Trent and Wolverhampton “struggled at times” during the “second wave” of the pandemic so, under an NHS “mutual aid agreement”, patients were transferred to the units at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Princess Royal Hospital.

CCG Accountable Officer David Evans added that neither site had had any of these “out-of-area admissions” for a few weeks. “A couple” of those patients remain in hospital but are no longer in the intensive treatment unit [ITU], he said.

Mr Evans also told Telford and Wrekin’s Health and Wellbeing Board that Pfizer’s vaccine, which needs to be stored below -70 degrees centigrade and is therefore difficult to transport, will be used on NHS and care staff.

Other vaccines, expected to be approved in the coming weeks, will be used in the wider vaccination programme, he said.

Mr Evans and Dr Povey were responding to questions from Councillor Karen Tomlinson. She asked whether the PRH and RSH were still taking “overflow” cases from other hospitals.

Dr Povey said: “There’s mutual aid across the NHS in terms of ITU capacity. Overall across the country, across the Midlands, there’s plenty of capacity, but some hospitals are struggling more than others.

“Stoke has been struggling at times, as has Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Nottingham.

“So there have been, at points, patients transferred to Shrewsbury ITU and Telford ITU, but they haven’t been there for a number of weeks.”

Mr Evans added: “We’ve not had any admissions out-of-area for a few weeks now. I believe a couple of those patients are not in ITU but they are still in local hopsitals.

But, as Julian says, we do have a mutual aid agreement in place, particularly for critical care beds, to make sure patients are admitted to an ITU if they need to.”

Cllr Tomlinson then asked about the Pfizer vaccine which, she said, “needs to be administered in a controlled environment”, and asked whether patients from care homes would be transported to the venues.

“Just talking from experience, we know how difficult it can be to move people with dementia,” she said. “Has the government given us any information at all?”

On Tuesday, November 2, the government confirmed Pfizer’s vaccine, “BNT162b2”, had been approved for use by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.

Mr Evans said others “look like they are going to be licensed fairly soon” too.
“The Pfizer one has challenges around storage, because of the temperature it has to be stored at,” he said.

“The reason that’s being kept in one place, one vaccination centre, is because of the logistical difficulties of moving that around, so the intent is that vaccine will just be used for NHS and care staff.

“As the other vaccines come around in the next few weeks, they will be more easily transportable, and then we’ll be able to start a vaccination programme.”
This, he said, would take place in care homes, existing Covid-19 testing sites and other vaccination venues.