
Health bosses say local hospitals are expecting to come under more pressure from COVID cases in the coming weeks.
There may continue to be delays to some planned NHS treatments in North Yorkshire over the coming weeks as the NHS in the county diverts resources to coping with COVID cases and delivering the COVID booster programme.
Amanda Bloor from the NHS says they are prioritising urgent cases.
Amanda Bloor says urgent treatments for things like cancer, heart attacks and stroke will continue but appointments for non life threatening conditions may be delayed.
Pressure on the county's hospitals is expected to increase further over the coming weeks. public Health consultant, Dr Victoria Turner says that COVID infections were likely to rise and that hospitalisations would follow as the true impact of the new variant is felt over the New Year.
She said:
“The level of hospitalisations we are seeing at the moment are predominantly reflecting where we were with the Delta variant a couple of weeks ago.
“But it is safe to say Omicron is going to be the dominant variant in North Yorkshire.”
The warning comes as early studies by researchers at the Imperial College London have found the Omicron variant may cause milder illness than Delta.
Dr Turner said while the findings were encouraging, it was still early data and that the larger number of infections from Omicron meant a rise in hospitalisations – similar to what is being seen in London – should be expected.
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