Coronavirus: Liverpool intensive care units '90% full' as city braces for second wave

‘At the current rate of increase, we would expect Liverpool to surpass the peak of the first wave probably within the next seven to 10 days,’ says councillor Paul Brant

Intensive care units in Liverpool’s hospitals are more than 90 per cent full, according to a local health leader, as the city braces for a second wave of Covid-19 infections.

Councillor Paul Brant, cabinet member for adult health and social care at Liverpool City Council, warned that hospital services were once again being forced to care for patients critically ill with coronavirus.

"Our intensive, critical care beds are filling up very fast,” he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"The most recent figures I've seen suggest they are over 90 per cent full and our acute hospital trusts have occupancy levels of Covid-positive patients of over 250.

"At the current rate of increase, we would expect Liverpool to surpass the peak of the first wave probably within the next seven to 10 days."

Addressing the intensive care situation, he added: "They are not all Covid patients, I should say, but they are running very full and they are running with an increasing number of people who are Covid-positive."

He added: "It has become clear that the intensity of the demand on hospital services here in Liverpool is crowding out anything other than dealing with Covid."

Liverpool’s hospitals have already started scaling back their elective activity and preparing non-specialist staff to be redeployed to critical care teams, according to a memo seen by the Health Service Journal.

Steve Warburton, the chief executive of Liverpool University Hospitals NHS trust, said that the city’s main acute hospitals had reached a “critical point”.

He added that the trust was “taking a phased approach to reducing our elective programme, while exploring options with other providers to maintain some of this work in alternative locations”.

Liverpool and Merseyside have been placed into the ‘very high risk’ category as part of the three tier alert level system unveiled by the government this week.

This means that residents are banned from socialising with other households, both indoors and in private gardens. Hundreds of bars and pubs that cannot operate as restaurants have also been forced to shut.

According to the local council, Liverpool’s latest weekly Covid-19 rate is 634.7 cases per 100,000 people – one of the highest figures in the country.

Scenes of people partying in the city centre after pubs closed at 10pm last night – two hours before the new Tier 3 restrictions were imposed – have meanwhile been condemned.

Work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey said that the gatherings were “irresponsible”, and “don't help in any way to bring down the escalation of the virus”.

One intensive care doctor in Liverpool told Sky News: "We have limited capacity in our ITUs across the network, but more worryingly, we have people in the corridors on trolleys waiting for beds.

"We are running at 100 per cent capacity. Our emergency departments are overcrowded. No social distancing possible. I am dreading we are heading towards a disaster. Then you see crowds behaving such a way. I am really devastated and disgusted."