NHSUK: Emergency Respiratory Admissions

Between 1st January 2017 and 18th September 2021 the emergency departments of a UK NHS Trust that must remain nameless handled a total of 1,928,918 admissions. Let us ignore the controversy surrounding the PCR test and identification of SARS-COV-2, and let us ignore the controversy surrounding classification and diagnosis of COVID-19 and get stuck straight in with some basics. When I say ‘basics’ I mean the number of folk arriving by emergency ambulance with a respiratory condition (acute or chronic) who were treated in the emergency department for a respiratory condition (CPAP, intubation, nebuliser, supplemental oxygen etc). Our expectation is that we are going to see a massive surge in emergency respiratory intake during the spring of 2020 and the winter of 2020/21 due to COVID-19 but this is not what we see.

In the slide below I have plotted daily intake of emergency respiratory admissions requiring treatment for the period 1st January 2017 – 18th September 2021. We observe a subst…