“Last week, Sir Patrick Vallance and Prof Chris Whitty presented another of their Graphs of Doom; this one cherry-picked several hospitals on course to run out of beds.
“”Actually[...] the national picture looks promising. Covid occupancy has peaked or is falling in most regions.””
Allison Pearson, 1 December 2020
In Wednesday’s Daily Telegraph, columnist Allison Pearson claimed that last week Sir Patrick Vallance and Professor Chris Whitty warned about specific hospitals at risk of running out of beds, despite the fact that Covid-19 bed occupancy had peaked or was falling in most regions.
She adds: “Funny they didn’t mention that at the press briefing, eh?”
However, Sir Patrick and Professor Whitty did not make any claims about specific hospitals being overwhelmed at last week’s Downing Street press conference. And Sir Patrick explicitly noted that hospital Covid occupancy appeared to have reached a peak.
There was one coronavirus briefing last week, on 26 November. The slides presented at that briefing by Sir Patrick and Professor Whitty do not refer to any shortages at specific hospitals.
While bed occupancy figures specifically were not mentioned by either expert, Sir Patrick did note that the number of patients in hospital with Covid-19 across the UK had now “flattened off” following a “slowing of the rate of hospitalisations”.
Professor Whitty also made general reference to how decisions on which tier areas were placed into would be informed by understanding pressures on local NHS trusts.
There was also a press conference on Monday 23 November, which featured Professor Whitty, though not Sir Patrick, following the news of data from the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine trials.
There was no reference in this press conference to hospital bed occupancy figures, and no slides or graphs were presented.
We cannot find any other statements by Sir Patrick or Professor Whitty citing the rise in bed occupancy rates, due to Covid-19, for individual hospitals at any point in the week of 23 November.
There was also a Downing Street press conference on 20 November, which did not feature either Professor Whitty or Sir Patrick. In it Professor Stephen Powis, National Medical Director of NHS England, presented a slide of the number of Covid hospital in-patients in England. He also explicitly discussed the fact that the recent data appeared to show a “levelling off”.
Ms Pearson may be referring to the briefing that took place on 31 October—before England’s second national lockdown was introduced—when slides were shown which did highlight some specific hospitals which had higher bed occupancy than during the first Covid-19 peak.
But, back then, this also reflected the fact that, generally across regions and the country, there were rising numbers of people in hospital with Covid-19.
Professor Whitty and Sir Patrick made similar comments at a select committee appearance on 3 November.
So, ultimately, the situation at the end of October was one in which the number of patients in hospital with Covid-19 was rising, and the slides presented at the daily briefing showed some trusts with particular capacity pressures.
The situation at the end of November was that the number of Covid-19 cases in hospitals was not rising. This has been discussed and shown more than once during press briefings in recent weeks.
While Ms Pearson attributed her figures on the number of patients in hospital with Covid-19 to her contact “George” who is “embedded deep in the secretive NHS”, you can access those figures which are published daily by NHS England here.