Covid was like a every day terror assault, physician tells inquiry

Treating sufferers throughout the pandemic was like responding to a every day terror assault, the Covid inquiry has heard.

Giving testimony, Professor Kevin Fong, spoke of employees he met throughout a hospital go to being in “complete bits”.

The previous nationwide medical adviser in emergency preparedness at NHS England recalled a dialog with an intensive care physician throughout a go to in December 2020.

“I requested him instantly what issues had been like and… I’ll always remember, he replied it’s been like a terrorist assault every single day because it began, and we don’t know when the assaults are going to cease.”

Prof Fong described Covid because the “largest nationwide emergency this nation has confronted since World Struggle Two”, and repeatedly broke down in tears on the stand whereas describing what he had seen and his conversations with different employees members.

In the course of the pandemic, Prof Fong, a guide anaesthetist, performed round 40 visits of the “hardest hit” intensive care models on behalf of NHS England to supply peer help to the medical doctors and nurses working there.

He wrote experiences which have been despatched again to senior managers together with England’s chief medical officer Prof Sir Chris Whitty.

He mentioned the “scale of loss of life” was “very troublesome to seize within the figures”.

“It was actually, actually astounding… We had nurses speaking about sufferers ‘raining from the sky’, the place one of many nurses advised me they bought bored with placing folks in physique luggage.”

“We went to a different unit the place issues bought so dangerous they have been so wanting sources, they ran out of physique luggage and as a substitute have been caught with nine-foot clear plastic sacks and cable ties.”

“These are people who find themselves used to seeing loss of life however not on that scale and never like that.”

Prof Fong mentioned that “regardless of the most effective efforts of everybody within the system” the surge of demand for healthcare brought on by Covid meant it was “not attainable to ship the usual of care that will ordinarily be anticipated.”

He described the state of affairs because the worst he had witnessed: “I used to be on the scene of the Soho bombing in 1999, I labored within the emergency division throughout the seventh July suicide bombing with the helicopter medical service. And nothing I noticed throughout all of these occasions was as dangerous as actually Covid was each single day for each single one in every of these hospitals by way of the pandemic surges.

“It’s painful now as a result of it was very clear what was taking place to the sufferers, it was very clear what was taking place to the employees. The employees have been very injured by simply how overwhelmed they have been by the entire thing.”

In December 2020 as Covid charges have been rising once more throughout the UK, he mentioned he was requested to go to an unnamed hospital with a medium-sized intensive care unit.

“I am going to always remember it,” he mentioned. “It was a scene from hell.”

“This was a hospital in huge, huge bother…. there have been so few employees that a few of the nurses had chosen to both use the affected person commodes [or] put on grownup diapers as a result of there was actually nobody to offer them a bathroom break,” he added.

“This was a hospital breaking on the seams.”

On the finish of his proof, he was thanked by the inquiry’s chairwoman Baroness Hallett who mentioned “it was apparent how distressing it was for you and reliving such an ordeal isn’t simple.”

England’s chief medical officer Prof Sir Chris Whitty, who was subsequent to talk on the inquiry, mentioned he agreed with the proof “very powerfully laid out” by Prof Fong.

He mentioned that NHS hospitals in England entered the pandemic in early 2020 with a “very low” stage of beds in intensive care in comparison with comparable high-income international locations.

“That is a political alternative. It is a system configuration alternative, however it’s a alternative,” he advised the inquiry.

“Subsequently, you will have much less in reserve when a serious emergency occurs, even when it is wanting one thing of the dimensions of covid.”

Sir Chris instructed that international locations just like the UK had no different however to impose lockdown and different social restrictions to keep away from a “catastrophic” quantity of strain on the healthcare system.

He accepted that “in lots of particular person circumstances” medical doctors and nurses discovered the state of affairs “extremely troublesome” however mentioned with out lockdown restrictions “the expectation is it might have gotten worse. Not a trivial quantity worse, however actually fairly considerably worse”.

Requested about PPE for healthcare staff, Sir Chris mentioned that messaging round which masks NHS employees ought to put on was “confused” at first of the pandemic, resulting in an “erosion of belief”.

He instructed that extra analysis was wanted to see if a better grade FFP3 masks provided extra safety than a fundamental surgical masks in real-life hospital use, relatively than in a laboratory.

“The query is what occurs when individuals are utilizing it day-in and day-out in operational circumstances, and if it does not maintain up in that state of affairs, it is not doing a heck of quite a lot of good,” he mentioned.

In a future pandemic, he mentioned he would give healthcare staff the selection of which masks to put on “inside purpose”.