LONDON (AP) – When the UK surpassed the 100,000 coronaviruses killed this week, it was much more than a number for Justin Fleming.
Lying in a hospital bed with COVID-19, he knew how easily he could become one of them, if not for the doctors and staff working to save his life.
“I thought maybe I wouldn’t see my partner again, my mother: being a dead friend, being just a statistician,” said Fleming, 47, who was rushed to King’s College Hospital in mid-January struggling for to breathe. His condition improved after two weeks of receiving oxygen in an acute room.
The scale of the coronavirus outbreak in Britain can seem overwhelming, with tens of thousands of new infections and more than 1,000 deaths added every day. But in hospitals ’COVID-19 wards, the pandemic feels both epic and intimate, as staff fight the virus one patient at a time and with no end in sight.
Fleming says he was amazed at the diversity of “amazing” staff, including newly qualified doctors, a newly arrived nurse from the Philippines and staff at the dental salon and brain injury teams, who alleviated his isolation and saved the dead from the list.
“Because you have to be isolated (with COVID-19), it feels like it’s just gone,” he said. “It’s almost like you could become a person other than a week old.”
Fleming is one of more than 37,000 coronavirus patients being treated in British hospitals, almost twice as much as spring growth. King’s College Hospital, located in a diverse and densely populated area of south London, had almost 800 COVID-19 patients earlier this winter. A new national blockade has dropped the number to 630 which is still difficult.
Critical care consultant Dr. Jenny Townsend works in a 16-bed intensive care unit that currently has 30 patients, with two beds pressed into each bay designed for one. In normal times, an intensive care nurse cares for a patient. The ratio is now one to four.
“We all feel very stretched out and everyone is playing to help each other with each of the roles that are required,” Townsend said.
“We are doing the best we can and we do it in very difficult circumstances. We try to deliver as close as we normally can, but from time to time due to the number of patients, we have to prioritize what we can and cannot do, ”he said.
This is especially difficult because coronavirus care requires a lot of labor. It takes a people of people and skills to treat every critical patient.
One recent day in the ward, Townsend supervised a tracheotomy, inserting a small tube into the patient’s trachea to help him breathe without a ventilator, a small step toward a possible recovery. In the hallway, family liaison officer Berenice Page made a video call to relatives from a patient’s bed. More than half a dozen workers worked to “prone” another patient, throwing them carefully into their stomachs to help them breathe more easily.
Like others, this hospital had to adapt quickly when COVID-19 first began in early 2020, finding room for more patients and redistributing medical staff to work with unusual functions. The wards were converted, staff from other departments were added to the new COVID wards, and intensive care units expanded.
Then, after a summer break when cases plummeted, the hospital had to do it all over again when the virus roared again in the fall. Many cash find the fight harder the second time.
“In the first wave, people’s energy levels were better because we were dealing with the unknown and learning as we progressed,” said Felicia Kwaku, the hospital’s nursing director. “In this second wave it’s worse, because the patients are much sicker, the numbers are higher and the wave feels longer.”
Fleming, a coronavirus patient who has seen the pandemic up close, says Britain’s overworked doctors “need credit now, help and support”.
“This is an important historical moment and they protected the country,” he said.
Although the number of patients admitted to London hospitals with COVID-19 is gradually decreasing, the pressure on doctors will only slowly decrease due to the temporary lag between infections, hospitalizations and, for the sickest patients, transfers to intensive care.
This means ongoing challenges for staff such as the family liaison officer. Every day, he calls the patients’ relatives to inform them of their condition, and then takes a tablet around the room so that family members, prevented from visiting them, can see at least their unconscious loved ones. .
“It seems like a real privilege to be able to talk to them,” said Page, whose regular job is to coordinate resuscitation.
“You have a vision of the patient’s life when you make video calls and you see (relatives) sitting at home and some of them have young children. And, yes, I feel his despair. But I also know what a difference it makes, ”he said.
“We often talk to people whose relatives will die. It is a very difficult situation. … I think when they talk to us. I can say that some of them find that there is a certain tranquility for them “, he added.
Kwaku said the pace of inpatients remains “relentless” and implored the British tired of blocking them to follow the rules of social distancing.
He said hospital workers are concerned about the rapid implementation of coronavirus vaccines in the UK. More than 7 million people have received the first of two doses.
Kwaku says staff also receive a boost from patients who recover and return home, and are comforted by those who offer “a good death,” free of struggle and fear.
“You take all the turns as it comes, you take them every day,” he said. “You may fall and get up. You may feel low, you may get caught. Maybe you cry. … But we are here to care for patients and take care of each other. “
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