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A “MAJOR INCIDENT” was declared by local councils and emergency services in Essex today as health services in the county approached breaking point under the weight of Covid-19 cases.
Mid and South Essex NHS Trust placed its three hospitals on “critical alert" on Tuesday.
The Essex Resilience Forum (ERF), which brings together councils, emergency services, the NHS, voluntary organisations and others in times of crisis, said today that the number of Covid-19 hospital patients is higher than at the peak of the first wave in April.
The group warned: “These levels are likely to increase further in the coming days.”
Essex Police Chief Constable Ben-Julian Harrington, who is co-chair of the ERF, said that declaring a major incident allowed the forum to “seek further support from the government to address the severe pressures which the health system is under.”
Robert Halfon, the Tory MP for Harlow in Essex, described the declaration as “incredibly alarming.”
Public service union Unison said the crisis was “in danger of spiralling out of control.”
Unison Eastern head of health Sasha Savage said: “We’ve been lurching from one crisis to another during this pandemic and the government’s cack-handed efforts have done little to help.
“Even with an NHS hammered by a decade of austerity, much more could have been done to slow the spread of Covid-19 — from PPE to testing, to a pig-headed insistence on keeping schools fully open.
“Once again it’s left to overworked and underpaid NHS staff to pick up the pieces.
“Everyone must now work together to stop this major incident spiralling further out of control – from ministers making sure local services have the resources they need to the public following Covid restrictions.”