One of London’s largest hospitals has warned that it is on track to be almost Covid alone in a rise in cases in the capital it has left ‘scrambling to turn operating theaters, surgical recovery areas and stroke wards into intensive care units for the seriously ill.
As the numbers of Covid cases in the UK followed a seemingly insignificant rise, hitting 55,892, with 23,813 in hospitals and 964 reporting deaths, chief executive officer of the University College London Hospitals (UCLH) trust, the Professor Marcel Levi, that entries were already spinning longer than the first wave in the spring.
All London hospitals were meeting the same demands on beds and staff, and the University College hospital included other hospitals that were less able to cope, he told the Guardian.
“This is a lot more than we had in March and April,” said Levi, an intensive care physician. The 500-bed hospital has 220 Covid patients, with numbers rising by 5% each day, but the real emphasis is on intensive care where there are now 70 critically ill patients, as was the case. spring, and rising rapidly.
“Our ITU normally has around 35 patients so we have already doubled in size at UCLH. We are again complying with London ‘s demand for 92 patients next week, after which we may need to grow further, ”he said.
At the hospital, intact floors need to be dismantled and rebuilt to the standards required for intensive care wards. As they did in March, they need to turn five floors and provide them with advanced oxygen and air pressure (CPAP) devices that help people breathe.
More than half of England’s top hospital trusts – 64 out of 140 – have more Covid-19 patients than they did at the height of the first wave of the virus. This includes 11 of the 14 trusts in the east of England and 12 of the 19 trusts in the south east of England. The NHS said on Thursday it was making sure Nightingale hospitals were “reactivated and ready to admit patients”.
Levi praised “amazing” staff, who volunteered to take their leave at Christmas and New Year to save lives. But they are greatly stretched: intensive care nurses usually work with one patient; now there may be four or five in their care.
Elaine Thorpe, an emergency care matron at the hospital, said they set up 20 new intensive care beds on a full Christmas Eve before Hogmanay. “The biggest thing for me is that I’m really worried about my team. Nurses have to thin themselves out. We go back to the levels where we were before, where as one ICU nurse looked after the contents of four or more patients. And we’ve had a lot of tears already.
“This is happening all over London. UCLH doesn’t feel like the other hospitals at all, but a little stretching of an ICU nurse is too much of a stretch and you know we’re already doing far beyond what we’d like to do. And they are scared too. We are already alive again. ”
The tears are partly because nurses are unable to provide the special care they want to their patients, as well as the distress that Covid inflicts on everyone. She tells of nurses who listen to families at home pouring their hearts through iPads to seriously ill friends at ITU, who may hear but can’t respond.
But there are also tears of harassment that people are still taking risks with the virus. “It’s not about us not stepping in and doing our job. We have all sacrificed Christmas and the New Year but that is not about it. We are here for the patients. But it is in the hands of the public to stop this, and he is not listening and tonight [New Year’s Eve] it’s definitely going to make things even worse, ”she said.
She saw high-profile people on Twitter saying hospitals and intensive care units are empty. “I don’t understand and my team doesn’t understand it, and that’s the very sad thing,” she said.
We were almost there, she said, with vaccines on the way. If people had missed Christmas and the new year, it could have been different, she said, but now “this is going to be weeks. None of us can stop this soon. ”
Levi also believes that people have rested too much. The huge increase in cases is not just about the opposite, he says. “I think it’s fair to say that we are also seeing the effects of Christmas shopping, where people were gathering in shops and of course not adhering to the rules of speed and speed. -everything, ”he said.
They will succeed because they must. Levi, from the Netherlands, praises the “great suffering and able mind” of people in London and the UK.
“If we have to do more, we’ll do more, and we’ll make up quickly and find other ways to provide the care that we need, but it’s very tight. In my long experience both as a consultant and as a hospital director, I had never experienced something like this before, ”he said.
They will deal with the floods because of the dedication and commitment of the staff. “I feel we have no choice. These people need medical care. We have to deliver. We can deliver. And we are also very confident that we can deliver it in a safe and appropriate way, ”he said.