The impact of the rapidly increasing rates of Covid-19 across our boroughs is placing huge pressures on our resources. We must focus on treating those patients who need the most urgent care and have had to take the very difficult decision to postpone our non-urgent services.

This will allow us to allocate our staff to the areas that need them most. This is particularly important as many of our staff live locally and are absent due to the pandemic, either isolating or ill themselves.

From today (21 December) we have postponed all non-urgent outpatient appointments. Wherever possible we will hold these virtually as we did in the last wave – during that time we converted thousands of appointments to phone clinics for which many of our patients were grateful as it meant they did not need to come into hospitals. Affected patients are being contacted directly by our Appointments team.

We are also postponing all non-urgent procedures; however urgent cancer surgery will continue, as will chemotherapy. Cancer and urgent diagnostic endoscopies will also continue – from today, these will all take place at King George Hospital, within the private sector or diagnostic hubs.                   

We will keep this situation under constant review.

We appreciate this is not what any of us were hoping for, however the pandemic is continuing to cause immense challenges across north east London. Please rest assured that together with our partners we are doing everything we can together as a system to support each other and minimise the impact on our patients.

Please do play your part in helping to keep the pressure off our hospitals and primary and community care services, by following the guidance – remember hands, face, space – it really does make a difference.