Hope and frustration on COVID wards.
It is about 4 hours when seven ambulances arrive all at once.
COVID-19 hospital admissions may have declined slightly this week, but check out the Barnet Hospital emergency department for a fact-finding.
You can see we are still in crisis.
Home cleaner Larisa Atanasova, known in hospital for her machine-like effectiveness, can hardly put the bays down quickly.
She flies and flies and flies; beds, railings, sinks and tapes.
“They come every two minutes,” she explains, before adding: “What can you do? The next patient is coming.”
She’s right, two minutes after she enters another room Davian Hunt arrives.
He is 52, in good physical shape, but can barely walk.
“Just a complete lack of energy,” he says, not lying on the bed. “I just want to sleep all the time.”
Across the region behind a glass wall a man, who is struggling to breathe, is about to receive CPAP – a mouth that explodes rapidly in air with oxygen.
63-year-old postal worker Felix Ramat lost his wife four days earlier to COVID-19 – now he is in danger of becoming ill.
In addition, his 40-year-old son-in-law is already upstairs in the hospital on an air conditioner.
This virus is passed on through families and has also spread through the A&E department.
The two nurses who are treating Mr Ramat themselves have just recovered from the illness and are now back in the crowd.
Nurse Aoibheann McCarthy says: “It’s been intense. I’m personally just back from getting COVD-19. So it’s been a hard struggle. I’m weak. I’m But I’m back here We’re back busy We’re full every day We’re struggling, but we’re getting through We have good support here about seven of us at one week. “
Upstairs in COVID-19 intensive care wards is uncertain, but the same unconscious patients are preparing for it.
Respiratory physiologist Clare Bendall does what has been said – pushing organs back and forth, making sure the patient’s joints do not stand up until easier back movement.
She talks the patient through each movement while lying unresponsive on the bed.
“We’re now going to lift this left arm up. We’re going to rub your chin. And right. Beautifully,” she tells the man attached to a machine- air.
She says: “Sometimes you hear from previous survivors … they say they remember hearing accents rather than real words.” She looks at her patient and says: “But you know, I just think he ‘s a man, and I’m going to tell him what I’m doing. . “
She then says to the man: “Now, going to give this knee a little stretch. Going to pull this knee to your belly. So we’re going to bend that. up. Beautiful. We can’t let go of those knees and bumps become stiff. “
It’s sometimes easy to forget that the people who do this kind of work on a day-to-day basis absorb a lot of what’s going on in the room.
“I think this sounds silly but the worst thing is when we do our ward books in the morning,” says Clare. “That’s when so many RIPs are bigger than the ones that have gone down to the wards. And I think that’s when it starts.”
The feeling begins to rise behind her eyes.
“And they’re a lot younger – in the first wave, sorry, I remember thinking that could be my mother. That could be my aunt. And now I think that could be me, that could be my brother, my sweetheart.
“We’ve lost people in their 30s, in their 40s. It’s heartbreaking.”
Having told me this, she barely stopped before she gathered herself and returned to work.
Not surprisingly, a study last month by King’s College London found that nearly half of the intensive care workers surveyed over the summer reported symptoms of post-traumatic, severe trauma. mind or anxiety.
Overall, physicians say special intensive care nurses are under the greatest pressure, people like Harriet Goudie working at an outpatient ward on the second floor of Barnet’s sister hospital, the Royal Free in charge north London.
Harriet says: “Honestly, it’s been really bad for the ITU nurses. I think, this wave in particular, it was really bad. The first wave, it was so big And I think the pressure on ITU nurses under this is unbelievable. “
Harriet has observed four patients when she would normally offer one-to-one care.
She said: “These are very ill patients. So there’s a lot of organ support and for the ITU nurses that’s just really hard to try to manage.
“This is an outpatient ward we had to turn into an ITU ward. So it’s very difficult, as you can see in those bed spaces, to try to set up all the IT equipment. We are trying to install small spaces, we are just running out of things like plugs, for example, we do not have enough plug sockets in some areas so we can for us to cut all our equipment. “
As we are on the ward together, a family is talking on a video call to a very sensitive patient, telling him that they love him, telling him that he can get better.
He has his glasses on as soon as he can sit up and read, and they miss him and can’t wait for him to get better and come home.
“He can hear us,” says one. “His eyes open.”
This is the first time it has happened.
Out of sight from their video screen he also tries to raise a hand, but bends back.
He is still lying. But he is listening.
And as they speak the curtains are drawn and doormen arrive.
A man in his early 60s in bed opposite has died, he gives it to the killer.
A body in a white bag is placed in a blue bag on a trolley and wheeled out.
It’s a scene made more brutal by the tender voices and strong energy from the family, chatting to an unresponsive man, in the hut next door.
But they are right that they have hope because patients will come back.
Upstairs in another intensive care unit is 53-year-old Dima Hooper sitting in the chair.
She is an NHS provider for ward patients.
The week before, I saw her in a similar condition to the one listening to the video call.
Now, though, she has a tube in her throat and she smiles.
She gives me and my camera the thumbs up and reveals that within two days she expects to be able to talk.
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Just down the corridor Nicolae Ursachi, who spent 40 days on an air conditioner, stands with the support of a walking machine and three workers.
He is out of breath within four steps and has to sit down. It is also strongly proven, and after some rest he wants more.
Medical assistant Chloe Davis says: “It’s like a marathon, you have to train for it. That’s what we explain to patients as. It’s a marathon, not a sprint . “
The same could be said for the work that pharmacists do – like Nicolae their progress is slow and tedious but driven by hope.
Over three nights, Sky News will host a series of special programs examining the UK’s response to the pandemic.
Watch COVID Crisis: Learning the lessons at 8pm on 9, 10 and 11 February.
© Sky News 2021