Covid: Kings' College Hospital cancels operations due to staff shortages

Some non-urgent operations at a London hospital trust have been cancelled due to the surge in Covid cases.

Kings' College Hospital said cancellations had been made because of staff sickness and higher demand.

Imperial, Guy's and St Thomas', and Barts NHS Trust have also previously said "routine and non-urgent" operations may be called off in the coming weeks.

On Wednesday daily Covid cases in the UK exceeded 100,000 for the first time.

A King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust spokeswoman said some non-urgent operations had already been cancelled this month, due to higher than average levels of Covid-related staff infection and self-isolation.

She said: "We've taken the decision to postpone a small number of outpatient and non-clinically urgent operations due to staff sickness, which is being reviewed on a daily basis."

Barts' chief medical officer Alistair Chesser has said services were currently running as normal with staff redeployment, but contingency plans were in place.

He said they were anticipating a "significant number of admissions" of people with Omicron in the coming weeks, but did not know how many, so were "preparing for all possible eventualities".

Prof Tim Orchard, chief executive of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, said staff were being redeployed to cover absence, currently running at about 7% of the workforce, and the trust was planning with limited data.

He said: "The concern is that, given the rapid spread of the variant, even if severe disease continues to be more limited, a small proportion of a large number could still have a big impact on the NHS, most likely beginning in early January."

He added that they had already decided to limit non-urgent planned surgery into January and were now considering longer-term implications.

Guy's and St Thomas' Trust (GSTT) runs five major hospitals in the capital, including the Evelina London Children's Hospital.

The BBC understands GSTT is looking at standing down much of its routine operations and non-urgent surgery to redeploy staff to areas, including the most high priority surgical operations.

King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust

Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust

Barts Health NHS Trust