The NHS in Wales may need to “seriously think about” whether it can continue to provide non-essential services given pressures on critical care beds, the country’s chief medical officer has said, describing the situation as “perilous”.
“Although we have 77 patients with coronavirus in critical care beds, we have a lot of non-coronavirus patients,” Dr Frank Atherton said.
“We have in Wales taken the approach of trying to keep our non-essential services in the NHS moving, keep them active, and that does lead to pressures.
“In fact, most people in critical care beds in Wales are not suffering from coronavirus, they’re there for other reasons.
“It may be that we will come to the point that we might have to change that policy of providing, being able to provide non-essential services in Wales. That’s what we did in the lockdown, the initial lockdown, in February, March.
“We haven’t reached that point, we hope not to reach that point, we want to keep non-essential services moving if we possibly can. But that may be something that we need to seriously think about.”
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