In the decade leading up to the pandemic, the NHS had seen its budget squeezed on a historic level.<\/p>\n
Spending rose, but only just, despite fast-rising demand because of the ageing population and an increase in people with long-term health conditions.<\/p>\n
The inquiry’s report says this meant the NHS entered the pandemic with not enough beds or staff – a “precarious position” to be in.<\/p>\n
The situation meant that the NHS struggled to cope with the surge in Covid patients, particularly in the first wave, with supplies of oxygen almost running out in places.<\/p>\n
As the pandemic progressed, the NHS reached a state of overwhelm and patients did not get the level of care they needed. The pressure was, at times, intolerable and this continued through wave after wave of Covid.<\/p>\n
Waiting times for ambulances, even the most life-threatening calls, grew with some services turning to the military to help. <\/p>\n
Intensive care staffing ratios were diluted, going from one nurse to one patient to one to four at times.<\/p>\n
A collapse of the NHS was only narrowly avoided, the report says, because of the extraordinary efforts of its staff. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the decade leading up to the pandemic, the NHS had seen its budget squeezed on a historic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-484293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}