Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Nadeem, Fatima

Titel

Emerging epidemics

Ist Teil von

• British journal of general practice, 2021-05, Vol.71 (706), p.220-220

Ort / Verlag

England: Royal College of General Practitioners

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on 11 March 2020, a day that became the dawn of a 'new normal'. It has since been impossible to spare a moment without mention of this modern plague--and rightly so. Never in our lifetime has there been a public health calamity greater in magnitude or more unrelenting in its consequences. Facilitating timely access to secondary care was challenging even in the prepandemic era. By the end of 2019, there were 4.4 million patients waiting for elective care. As per the NHS Constitution, patients have a legal right to consultant-led treatment within 18 weeks of a referral, a target that had not been met for 4 years. Clearly, there was little capacity in the system to buffer the force of a global pandemic while maintaining 'business as usual'. On Mar 17, 2020, trusts were instructed to postpone all elective surgeries to divert resources towards COVID-19, leading to further delays for patients on the waiting list.