THE number of people visiting hospital emergency departments has stabilised after the precipitous drop caused by the coronavirus epidemic.
Attendances in A&E units last week were fractionally up across Scotland at 11,263 compared to 11,020 the previous week, but remain at a near record low.
The latest official figures are around 60 per cent down from the start of March, when there were more than 26,000 attendances country-wide.
Last week, other figures showed a sharp jump in deaths of all kinds being registered in Scotland, only around half of which were attributed to Covid-19.
It raised fears some people were avoiding hospitals because they feared catching Covid-19 or didn’t want to be a burden on the NHS.
It prompted interim chief medical officer Dr Gregor Smith to urge people not to put off seeking treatment for health problems such as chest pains and bleeding.
The continued low level of attendances in A&E saw an improvement in waiting times, with 92.7 per cent of people getting seen and treated within the four hour target.
Only 69 people had to wait over eight hours, and 12 over 12 hours.
By comparison, in the first week of March, just 83.8% of people were treated within four hours, 803 waited more than eight hours and 279 waited more than 12 hours.
Health Secretary Jeane Freeman urged people not to ignore serious symptoms and go to A&E with urgent problems
She said: “The A&E waiting times figures for the week ending April 5 show that 92.7% of people were seen and treated within four hours.
“This is due to the continued hard work and dedication of staff in our NHS who are providing an exceptional level of care during these extraordinary times.
“Each and every one of you has my very grateful thanks.
“While members of the public are continuing to listen to advice and only going to A&E if illnesses are immediate or life threatening, I would like to remind people not to ignore early warning signs of serious conditions.
“If you have new symptoms then it’s vital you get this checked out either by contacting your GP, or if symptoms are urgent by attending A&E.
“We are working closely with health boards and partnerships to ensure robust plans are in place to strengthen capacity and minimise the impact of Covid-19 across the health system.”
Liberal Democrat MSP Alex Cole-Hamilton said: "It is essential to keep frontline hospital services operating within their capacity, but we must make sure people aren't jeopardising their health for fear that there are no safe places to turn or that they will be a burden.
"It is important that people with illnesses or injuries unrelated to Covid-19 know that they can still get the help they need and that other urgent advice and medical treatment is still going ahead."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel