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Joy Halliday, specialist in intensive and acute medicine
“
It's tough and exhausting making decisions for people who would normally survive but don't survive the coronavirus.
«
Milton Keynes University Hospital, northwest of London, has been hard hit by the recent wave of COVID-19.
The death rate in the intensive care unit has risen to 80%, which is twice as high as last year.
Younger patients also fill the wards and seriously ill patients respond less often to treatment.
68-year-old Stephen Marshall recently tested negative for COVID-19 after undergoing back surgery.
But back home, his condition deteriorated.
Stephen Marshall, COVID-19 patient
“
I couldn't go up the stairs without panting and panting, couldn't go into the kitchen without panting and panting.
Didn't want to eat, didn't want to drink.
After a week I just called the ambulance and here I am, right in the hospital.
«
Now Marshall is in intensive care and needs ventilation while the lung disease rages through his body.
He lacks any understanding for opponents of vaccination.
Stephen Marshall, COVID-19 patient
“
What's the matter with these people?
Can't you see what's happening in front of your eyes?
They lack the mind, they say
>
I will not be vaccinated
<
.
I'm sorry, but if you don't have the vaccine, don't come to my shop, not my pub.
«
Doctors, like Joy Halliday, grapple with the stress of exhaustion and loss.
She looks after the 51-year-old supermarket worker Victorita.
Joy Halliday, specialist in intensive and acute medicine
“
So there are a lot more people coming to the hospital, much younger and much fitter.
You get steroids and remdesevir.
But even so, Victorita, who is young and fit and fifty-one, ended up having to be hooked up to a non-invasive ventilator.
«
The youngest person to be ventilated in the hospital is only 28. Despite the lockdown in Great Britain, according to a new study, the number of corona infections is not falling, but has recently even increased.
For frontline workers, the battle is far from over.
Wassim Shamsuddin, Clinical Director
“The difficulty is that even though we try our best and we use everything we have for the patients, it just doesn't seem to work. And that's what worries us. In the long run, employees will have to deal with this pandemic. But we will certainly see that employees leave the healthcare system because they have had this experience «
