It is incredibly encouraging to see that community prevalence of Covid is continuing to reduce, and that there has been a significant reduction in the number of people now being admitted to hospital with Covid. However, across north central London demand for critical care services remains very high. There are increasing numbers of people admitted to critical care with conditions other than Covid, and it will still be some weeks before we see anything like a return to normal levels of activity in our intensive care units. With hospitals so busy we are still only able to provide the most urgent elective (planned) care for local people, although we are preparing plans to restart elective care as soon as we are able.

As we enter February 2021 we continue to see considerable and unprecedented pressure on our health systems. While the recent drops in the number of Covid cases and hospital admissions due to Covid are encouraging, it is likely that north central London will need to sustain our current ‘super surge, full stretch’ intensive care levels over the coming weeks. We are currently operating at 250% of our usual intensive care capacity, which has been made possible by incredible flexibility and collaboration across health and care providers, ensuring local people can continue to have confidence that high-quality care is there when they need it.

We start 2021 with ongoing pressure on health and care systems due to the rapid spread of Covid-19 and the increasing number of people in hospital with Covid, including people admitted to intensive care. Given this, our work to vaccinate as many vulnerable people as quickly as possible against the virus becomes even more important. Staff across our acute and community providers, and primary care, are working with huge flexibility to increase capacity, including new critical care beds, high dependency and acute beds, and step-down facilities, we have also seen exceptional support from the specialist providers in our system.

As a turbulent and challenging 2020 draws to a close there is no let-up in the incredible amount of work going on across North Central London to deliver health and care. We are delighted to say that the roll-out of the Covid-19 vaccine is now underway commencing at the Royal Free Hospital Hub. From this week, five local vaccine services – one in each borough – have come online, with a further six due to come online later in the week. We are prioritising those most vulnerable to Covid-19, in line with national guidance, focussing on vaccinating over 80s, plus frontline care home and NHS staff.