Rising covid absences will have ‘significant impact’ on NHS recovery

The latest NHS England data has shown the number of covid-19 related absences of staff, either through sickness or self-isolation, has risen from 11,952 on 1 September to 19,493 on 1 October. Staff absence has almost doubled in the North West in this time as well – from 2,664 to 5,142 during the same period.

It peaked at 17,628 in the region on 11 April and means the October total accounts for nearly a third of that amount already (29 per cent). 

Alison Pittard, dean of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine, confirmed increasing numbers of NHS critical care staff were absent from work. 

Dr Pittard, who was also awarded an OBE in the Queen’s birthday honours list last week, told HSJ: “I suspect this is due to having to be at home with children asked to isolate and therefore the parent needing to isolate, as was the case in the first wave.

“This will have an impact on our ability to deliver critical care services. We know that staff numbers are inadequate at the best of times, with a significant vacancy rate especially for critical care nurses.”

Royal College of Anaesthetists council member Helgi Johannsson said the rising absence rate was “likely to have a significant impact”, particularly on routine operations.

Dr Johannsson, a consultant anaesthetist at Imperial College Healthcare Trust, said: “In my hospitals, I have been aware of several doctors and nurses having to isolate due to their children being asked to self-isolate. These healthcare staff were otherwise well and would have been at work.

“The anaesthetic and critical care service is key to maintaining the efficient and effective running of the hospital. The staffing is usually tightly controlled with little spare capacity in the system. Therefore, any additional sickness is likely to have a significant impact, particularly on our ability to deliver routine operations.”

Addressing the government decision to screen asymptomatic NHS staff for covid, he added: “While there is a high rate of community transmission of the virus it is vital to protect our vulnerable patients from infection. Screening asymptomatic staff makes absolute sense and we welcome the announcement.”

HSJ has been told some trusts allow immediate relatives of health workers to access tests from their own staff testing capacity, but others do not.

It was only recently, on 15 September, that NHSE’s chief people officer Prerana Issar told HSJ’s virtual workforce forum that “sickness absence due to covid, which was high when we had less testing close to the beginning of the pandemic, has come right down”.

An NHSE spokesman said: “Staff absence rates currently show significant regional variation, as would be expected given differential covid community prevalence. Test and trace are allocating additional pillar 2 testing volumes to allow asymptomatic staff testing to begin in high prevalence areas.”

The Department of Health and Social Care has been contacted for comment.