LONDON – The pandemic is gaining momentum in Britain fueled by a mutant strain of Covid-19, and health professionals in the country are paying a heavy price.
The virus has killed more than 76,000 people in the UK – the worst death toll in Europe and the fifth worst in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University. Hospitalization numbers are reaching new peaks.
Another 68,053 confirmed cases were announced by the government on Friday – the highest number in a single day so far – making it the eleventh consecutive day that more than 50,000 new cases have been reported.
“It went completely crazy,” said Ben Schischa, a paramedic with eight years of experience, who works in and around London and has been at the forefront of the pandemic since March.
Schischa, 39, said emergency calls from people confirmed or suspected of having Covid-19 “exploded exponentially” compared to a week or two ago.
Schischa said he saw patients wait hours in ambulances until the hospital had enough space for them. A patient he attended waited six hours outside a hospital the day before, he said.
“This is just one example of what is happening at the moment. And it is the same everywhere – London, Kent, Essex,” said Schischa, referring to the counties in south-east England that are among the hardest hit. “It has become like a war zone again.”
The worsening of the crisis and news of the new strain are taking a psychological toll. The thought that he will take the virus to his family haunts him. “You just don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said.
England and Scotland have entered new national blockades to stem the spread of the mutant strain and to try to prevent the beloved taxpayer-funded Britain’s beloved National Health Service from collapsing on Monday.
“Our hospitals are under more pressure from Covid-19 than at any time since the start of the pandemic,” said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, announcing the new restrictions.
On Friday, London Mayor Sadiq Khan declared a “major incident” in hospitals in the capital and admitted that health services “are in danger of becoming overwhelmed”. Hospitals would be without beds in two weeks, unless the spread of the virus slowed, he warned.
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“Everyone is overloaded. Hospitals are very busy,” said Dr. Jon Williamson, an anesthesiologist who was transferred to help deal with Covid-19 patients in the intensive care unit at Whittington Hospital in north London.
With the unit full of Covid-19 patients, he said, the last wave is very similar to the one he saw in March; patients arrive very ill and need high-level care.
“There is constant pressure on intensive care,” said Williamson, who – with permission from the hospital – documented the Covid-19 crisis with his camera and posted the results on his Instagram account.
He said he and his colleagues are able to manage the situation by transferring critical patients to other hospitals if they run out of beds. But he is concerned about what may happen in the coming weeks, when hospitalizations and deaths increase and the number of cases skyrockets.
“Suddenly, you will come to a point where they will all fail together, and the whole system will suddenly reach capacity,” he said. “The system has not yet failed, but it is incredibly stretched.”
On Monday, UK medical chiefs said many parts of the healthcare system were under immense pressure, with a significant number of patients with Covid-19 in hospitals and intensive care.
“We are not confident that the NHS can handle a sustained increase in cases,” they said in a statement. “And without additional measures, there is a material risk that the NHS will be overwhelmed in several areas in the next 21 days.”
It is not just about other people’s health that they are concerned about.
During the first wave of last spring, more health workers died from Covid-19 in the United Kingdom than anywhere else, according to figures compiled in July by Amnesty International. The surveillance agency found more than 540 deaths of social workers and medical care in England and Wales – second only to Russia.
And nearly 60% of doctors suffer from some form of anxiety or depression, with 46% saying their conditions have worsened since the start of the pandemic, according to a survey released last week by the British Medical Association.
Almost 70 percent said their levels of fatigue and exhaustion are higher than normal, as they deal with the daily number of registered cases and an increasing accumulation of care.
The NHS is facing “a perfect storm” of immense workload and staff depletion, warned the association’s chairman, Dr. Chaand Nagpaul, on Monday.
“The doctors are desperate,” he said.
An NHS England spokesman said in an e-mailed statement on Monday that the increase in the number of Covid-19 cases across the country means that all hospitals remain “extremely busy”.
Dr Rachel Clarke, a palliative care specialist at a hospital in Oxfordshire, a county in northwest London, remembers being horrified by images coming from New York City in April of crowded hospitals and people being treated in tents outside out.
“I feel that now, to a certain extent, we are inhabiting that world,” said Clarke, 48. “We don’t have patients in tents, but we have patients stuck in ambulances sitting outside the hospital because we can’t physically get them into the hospital. . “
Clarke said staff at his hospital are distressed and exhausted, with many experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder since the first wave.
“They are in the same situation again,” she said. “You are seeing patient after patient with the same symptoms, the same disease, over and over. And sometimes you are talking to them knowing that there is a very real chance that they may be dead in the morning. It is so painful to be in this situation for the second time. turn. “
Dr. Julia Grace Patterson, a psychiatrist who runs the advocacy organization run by doctors EveryDoctor, said she is concerned about the mental health of rescuers who are reliving the trauma of the early days of the pandemic.
“There hasn’t really been a period of loosening, release or the ability to process any of these things,” said Patterson.
Health workers never really relaxed between the pandemic peaks, as they were updating operations and consultations that were postponed or canceled during the first wave. “There really was no break for them,” she said.
Adding another layer of distress is the amount of misinformation, said Clarke, who regularly tweets about what he sees on the front lines.
“From people saying you are a liar, this is a ‘fraud’, it is not real and you are a disgrace,” she said. “I received death and rape threats for standing up and telling me how serious Covid-19 is.”
But while they are tired and desperate for things to change, she said, health workers still wear their clothes and put patients first – repeatedly.
“They are giving everything they have to patients,” said Clarke.