Ambulance staff are being urged to conserve oxygen supplies due to a surge in demand for small cylinders used in ambulances and A&E departments, it has been reported.
The Health Service Journal (HSJ) said that the East of England Ambulance Service Trust had told staff that oxygen suppliers were unable to fulfil its orders and supplies will need to be “carefully” managed for the next few days.
It comes amid a national shortage caused by the high number of patients with respiratory conditions and suppliers reporting that this is “higher than during the first wave of the Covid pandemic”.
The latest data shows the number of flu patients in hospitals in England has risen 79% in the last week, with an average of 3,746 people in hospital across the seven days to December 25.
This is up from 2,088 the previous week.
HSJ said East of England Ambulance Service Trust had said in a message to staff on Thursday: “Oxygen suppliers, including BOC, are currently unable to supply sufficient numbers [of small cylinders] to fulfil our orders.
“This has been escalated nationally and NHS Procurement are working to support ambulance trusts with supplies.”
NHS England said there was no shortage in supply of oxygen itself, but that it was seeing “significant” demand for portable oxygen cylinders due to “increased numbers of patients suffering from respiratory viruses such as flu and Covid-19”.
“Local areas are using existing supply as efficiently as possible while, nationally, suppliers are working with the NHS to help meet increased demand – anybody needing care should not hesitate to contact the NHS as they usually would,” they added.
The type of cylinder affected usually provides about 30 minutes of oxygen on full flow and is widely used on ambulances and also where patients are cohorted in A&E departments or kept in corridors waiting to be passed to hospitals, without access to the normal piped supply.
Many ambulances will carry several smaller cylinders and sometimes they also carry one larger one.
An East of England Ambulance Service spokesman said: “We have issued guidelines to crews to make sensible conservation measures, such as only returning cylinders when completely empty and using other oxygen sources where possible, but clinicians are instructed to continue managing patients’ target oxygen saturation levels in line with JRCALC [Joint Royal Colleges Ambulance Liaison Committee] guidelines.”
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