DEATHS from Covid 19 are falling as a percentage of people who have the virus, but hospital admissions as a result of the infection are rising, risking overwhelming our services in the region. As a result, other procedures are being affected.

A consultant neurosurgeon at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle has written in a national newspaper of having to cancel three brain operations on Friday and he said that cancer treatment was in “freefall”.

One of the main problems is that our hospitals, under resourced for years, are struggling to cope in segregating Covid patients from others.

Surely this is where the shiny new Nightingale hospitals should come in. There’s one only eight miles away from the RVI at Washington.

But there seems a strange reluctance to use them. During the last wave there was negligible use. This time? Nothing!

Why are local NHS managers and Government not moving on this? Are they just empty shells unable to be used because the staff required don’t exist?

Are they just Johnson’s and Hancock’s badly thought out PR stunt? It looks like it.

D Duell, Durham.