A critical incident has been declared at four hospitals due to “exceptional” numbers of patients with flu. <\/p>\n
University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust said “extreme” pressures were being experienced across its hospitals.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson said 269 patients with flu required hospital admission – with mask-wearing being introduced across all clinical departments.<\/p>\n
The trust, which runs Good Hope, Heartlands and Queen Elizabeth hospitals in Birmingham as well as Solihull Hospital said emergency departments remained “overcrowded”.<\/p>\n
It said, despite expanding capacity in its wards and A&Es, wait times remained “extended”.<\/p>\n
A statement added: “We are asking the communities we serve to think carefully about how they access healthcare. <\/p>\n
“If you do not have an emergency or life-threatening condition you may be redirected to another healthcare service such as a pharmacy or NHS 111.”<\/p>\n
It added patients could check alternatives and see current waiting times on the trust’s website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A critical incident has been declared at four hospitals due to “exceptional” numbers of patients with flu. University…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[103,397,396,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-182582","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}