North Wales consultant urges people to ‘be sensible and be safe’ as number of coronavirus patients admitted to intensive care doubles in a week

A consultant based in North Wales has urged the public to “be sensible and be safe” after the number of coronavirus patients being admitted to intensive care in the region doubled in the last week.

The area has seen a significant spike in cases of the virus over the last month, which has partly been attributed to a new variant spreading around the UK.

Richard Pugh, who works as an intensive care consultant at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd in Bodelwyddan, said the numbers entering hospital had gone up significantly, with many falling critically ill.

He said the disease was affecting people both old and young and despite the Oxford vaccine receiving the green light this week, he warned it could be some time before the situation stabilises.

The arrival of a second Covid vaccine is giving us all a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel.

But for now everyone needs to play their part in helping to stop the spread of Covid-19. pic.twitter.com/B2lgzcGiiM

— Betsi Cadwaladr (@BetsiCadwaladr) December 31, 2020

In a video message shared by Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, he said: “We’ve been relatively lucky in North Wales that the numbers of cases of coronavirus have not been that high compared to elsewhere.

“But things have begun to change in recent weeks, the numbers of patients we’ve seen in intensive care with coronavirus has doubled in North Wales over last week.

“The number of new cases of coronavirus every week has been going up.

“In fact, the numbers of cases of coronavirus identified over the last week in north east Wales is higher now than the all Wales average.

“What this means is that we’ll be seeing more cases, more people coming into hospital with coronavirus over the coming weeks.

“Unfortunately, some of those will become significantly ill. We see just under a quarter of the patients that come into hospital come to intensive care because they’re so severely ill.

“It’s a disease that can affect people who are relatively young, and even people who don’t have any significant chronic illnesses.

“There seems to be light at the end of the tunnel because we know that access to vaccines has had a dramatic lift in the last 24 hours.

“But this is going to take some time to have its effect on the transmission of coronavirus in our region, so I’d ask please be sensible, be safe. This isn’t forever.”