Covid in Sheffield: Hospital chief praises 'incredible staff' as Sheffield resists critical incident

Kirsten Major, chief executive of Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Once again our teams have been incredible in dealing with this latest stage of the pandemic which has meant we have been able to provide the increased COVID-19 care as well as continuing to deliver emergency and urgent care and some planned operations, but there is no doubt that the current situation is extremely challenging for all our hospital and community teams.

"Our community and social care teams are also working flat out to enable patients who no longer need hospital care to be transferred to the next stage of their care or discharged home as soon as possible.

"We are investing a lot of time in supporting staff right across our organisation because it really has been relentless for the last two years. We are so fortunate to have incredible people working in all our services who are dedicated to doing the right thing for patients even in such extreme circumstances, but we also need to look after each other if we are going to withstand these peaks of COVID and catch up the non-COVID care it impacts upon.

"Omicron is not just a bad cold for some people and I can assure you that there are many patients being admitted who are acutely unwell with their COVID-19 symptoms. The severity of Omicron is considerably less in those people who have been vaccinated.”