LONDON (AP) – When the UK surpassed 100,000 coronavirus deaths this week, it was much more than just a number for Justin Fleming.
While lying in a hospital bed with COVID-19, he knew how easily he could become one of them, if the medics and other staff did not work to save his life.
“I thought I might not see my partner again, my mother – a dead girlfriend, just be a stat,” said Fleming, 47, who was rushed to King’s College Hospital in mid-January. His condition improved after receiving oxygen in an acute care unit for two weeks.
The scale of the outbreak of Britain’s coronavirus could seem overwhelming, with tens of thousands of new infections and more than 1,000 deaths each day. But in hospitals’ COVID-19 wards, the pandemic feels epic and intimate, as staff fight the virus one patient at a time and without end.
Fleming says he was amazed at the diversity of “incredible” staff – including recently qualified medics, a nurse who had just arrived from the Philippines and staffed from dental departments and brain injury teams – who facilitated his isolation and saved him from joining. the list of the dead.
“Because you have to be isolated (with COVID-19), you feel like you just disappeared,” he said. “It’s almost like you can become a non-person within a week.”
Fleming is one of more than 37,000 coronavirus patients being treated in Britain’s hospitals, almost double the spring surge. King’s College Hospital, located in a diverse, densely populated area of south London, had nearly 800 patients earlier this winter. A new national exclusion dropped the number to an still challenging 630.
The critical care consultant, dr. Jenny Townsend, works in an intensive care unit with 16 beds that currently has 30 patients, with two beds in each bay designed for one. In normal times, one intensive care nurse cares for one patient. The ratio is now as high as one to four.
“We all feel very stretched and all feast on helping each other with the roles needed,” Townsend said.
“We do the best we can, and we do it in very difficult circumstances. We try to deliver as close to what we normally do, but sometimes, due to the number of patients, we have to prioritize what we do and what we cannot do, ”she said.
This is especially difficult because coronavirus care is labor intensive. It takes a village of people and skills to treat every critically ill patient.
On a recent day in the ward, Townsend supervised a tracheostomy and stuffed a tube into a patient’s trachea to help him breathe without a ventilator – a small step toward possible recovery. In the hallway, Berenice Page, a liaison officer for the family, made a video call to family members of a patient’s bed. More than half a dozen staff worked to “tend” another patient and gently toss them on their stomachs to help them breathe easier.
Like others, this hospital had to adapt quickly when COVID-19 first took place in early 2020, to make room for more patients and redeploy medical staff to work in unusual roles. Divisions were converted, staff were set up from other divisions to the new COVID divisions and extended guard units.
Then, after a summer break when the cases dropped back down, the hospital had to do it all over again when the virus roared again in the fall. Many staff find the struggle more difficult the second time around.
“In the first wave, people’s energy levels were better because we were dealing with the unknown and learning as we went along,” said Felicia Kwaku, co-director of nursing. “In this second wave, it’s worse because the patients are much sicker, the numbers are higher, and the wave feels longer.”
Coremavirus patient Fleming, who has seen the pandemic up close, says Britain’s overloaded medics ‘now need credit – and help and support’.
“This is an important historical moment and they have protected the country,” he said.
While the number of patients admitted to COVID-19 in London hospitals is gradually declining, the pressure on medics will only slowly ease due to the time lag between infections, hospitalizations and – for the sickest patients – after intensive care.
This means ongoing challenges for staff such as Family Liaison Officer Page. Every day, he calls family members of patients to keep them informed and then takes a tablet computer to the ward so that family members, who are forbidden to visit, can at least see their unconscious loved ones.
“I really find it a privilege to be able to talk to them,” said Page, whose usual job is as a resuscitation coordinator.
‘You see a glimpse of the patient’s life when you make the video calls, and you see (the family members) sitting in their homes and some of them have young children. And yes, I do feel their despair. But I also know what a difference it makes, ‘she said.
“We often talk to people whose relatives are going to die. This is a very difficult situation. … I think so when they talk to us. I can say that they find that there is a degree of peace for them, ‘she added.
Kwaku said the pace of patient admission remains “relentless”, and begging worn-out Britons remain to keep rules for social distance.
She said hospital workers were gaining courage due to the rapid introduction of coronavirus vaccines in the UK. More than 7 million people received the first dose of two.
Kwaku says that staff also get a boost from the patients who recover and go home, and comfort them with those who offer them a ‘good death’, free from struggle and fear.
“You take every shift as it comes, you take every day as it comes,” she said. “You can fall, and you get up. You may feel low, you pick yourself up. You may cry. … But we are here to take care of patients and care for each other. ‘
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