MILTON KEYNES, England (Reuters) – At Milton Keynes University Hospital in England, it is a battle between life and death. For those most ill, death prevails.
The latest wave of COVID-19 has hit hospital in north-west London with even more force than the first: younger patients fill their wards and fewer sick people deal with treatment.
Doctors and nurses deal with fatigue and weight loss.
Joy Halliday, a consultant in intensive care and intensive care, heads a high dependency unit for COVID-19. It is a step down from an intensive care unit (ICU), and patients with severe illness there receive oxygen CPAP.
Stephen Marshall, 68, is one of them. After testing negative for COVID-19 after a recent activity on his back, he initially thought he had a cold.
“I should never have left, it just made it worse,” he said, speaking through a mask pumping oxygen to the lungs.
“I’m on oxygen all the time now,” he said. “I seem to be holding my own right now, rubbing wood,” he said, raising his hand to his head.
Halliday said that with reduced visits, the doctors and nurses supported patients emotionally and medically.
“I can only imagine how difficult that is for a family at the end of the phone telling me that their girlfriend is getting worse … or they’re embarrassed or their oxygen levels are getting worse. fall, ”she said.
“It’s hard for us to see and it’s even harder for them.”
The youngest in her eight-bed unit is 51-year-old supermarket worker Victorita Andries. She was immediately put on oxygen when she was admitted five days ago.
“The device for me has been great,” Andries said, adding that she felt positive about the future. The oxygen levels of her mask are gradually reduced as her condition improves.
Only 28 are the youngest people hospitalized.
The official death toll from COVID-19 in the United Kingdom is 93,290, the highest in Europe and the fifth worst in the world after the United States, Brazil, India and Mexico. 39,068 COVID-19 patients are being treated in hospitals. Deaths rose by more than 1,820 people on Wednesday.
INTENSIVE CARE
In the ICU, where all seven patients had COVID-19, machines leak and pump oxygen into the silence.
Wassim Shamsuddin, clinical director for anesthesia and intensive care, said the patients were receiving mechanical ventilation, which required sedation.
“This time around we are finding that patients are not doing as well if they need to be ventilated,” he told Reuters.
“Our first wave mortality for patients entering intensive care was probably around 40%. This time we find that mortality is around 80%. ”
He explained that, unlike the first wave, all COVID-19 patients in the hospital now receive remdesivir and dexamethasone automatically after they are effective.
That means that those who end up in ICU during the second wave of pandemic are more likely to be the sickest patients, as they did not respond to these treatments.
Shamsuddin said he did not know whether a new version of the disease found in the UK was also contributing to higher mortality rates.
He said intensive care workers, who received promotions from doctors and nurses from other wards during the pandemic to maintain one-on-one care, were not used to such high death rates.
“At this point we are all keeping our heads down and getting on with it,” he said.
“Intensive care hospitals should be a place where we treat and improve patients. The problem here is that even though we try our best and throw everything at the patients, it doesn’t seem to work. ”
‘COLOR EVERY DAY’
Joe Harrison, chief executive of the Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, said the hospital had seen more than twice as many patients in the second wave as the first, and there were currently 186 patients with COVID- 19.
“We believe that, over the next week or so, we are going to continue to see real pressures in our emergency care unit,” he said. “And then hopefully we turn the corner and things move on.”
It was “very encouraging” to see how the medical staff coped with the pressures put on them by COVID-19 since it surfaced in the country early last year.
Back in the high dependency unit, Halliday and other staff were able to establish close ties with the patients, despite having to wear full protective gear and interact from behind masks and visors.
Patient Geoffrey Winter, 70, described the care he received as “miraculous”.
“Two of the nurses were cleaning my feet this morning; I felt like Jesus, ”he joked.
But Halliday raised the idea that it was tougher this time around.
“It’s draining. It drains physically. It drains the mind, ”she said.
“It’s hard to keep going from day to day for staff, just to see death in death outside, every day.”
Reciting with Paul Sandle; Edited by Guy Faulconbridge and Mike Collett-White