Daily increase in volume of fatalities now puts UK on par with rises seen in Europe’s worst-hit countries
A total of 7,097 deaths have been recorded in hospitals across the UK to date. Although this is lower than the death tolls in Italy, the US, Spain and France, the daily increase in the volume of fatalities now puts the UK on a par with rises seen in Italy and Spain.
Continue reading...A 61-year-old patient has received a guard of honour from the staff at the Leicester Royal Infirmary after recovering from Covid-19.
Hylton Murray-Philipson spent two weeks in the hospital’s intensive care ward after suffering nine days of dry cough and fever
Continue reading...Doctors will assess how PM is responding to coronavirus, including breathing issues
Boris Johnson was admitted to hospital for tests on Sunday night with persistent coronavirus symptoms, 10 days after testing positive. Some estimates suggest that about 5-10% of people with Covid-19 require hospital treatment.
His admission to hospital indicates doctors want to check how his body is responding to the virus, which will probably involve carrying out the following tests:
Continue reading...US president Donald Trump insinuates during a news conference that hospital staff in coronavirus hot spots such as New York city are stealing hundreds of thousands of surgical masks. He asked how the numbers of masks requested could shoot up from 10,000 to 300,000 overnight and said: ‘Are they going out the back door?’. Trump also lashed out at reporters who asked questions he did not like about his previous statements, telling, PBS NewsHour's Yamiche Alcindor: 'Don’t be threatening. Be nice'
Continue reading...The building work to turn London’s ExCel conference centre into an emergency hospital treating coronavirus patients 'within days' has begun.
As construction began on Wednesday morning, Alex Woodside, who has been working on the cabling, posted a chilling video on Facebook showing the cavernous 100,000 sq metre Docklands site, saying: 'If you are not taking this seriously, like I wasn't, I think we really need to start'
Continue reading...Healthcare workers on the frontline of the coronavirus outbreak in Northern Ireland have made an appeal to the public. In a video, doctors and nurses from the Belfast trust respiratory team urge people to stay at home in order to save lives
Continue reading...Intensive care audit shows sharp rise in admissions to critical care as London hospitals struggle to cope
The numbers of coronavirus patients needing life-or-death care have been doubling every three days, a report by senior doctors has revealed. London is worst affected, but the rest of the UK will soon be hit with a similar surge, the document warns.
The audit of intensive care carried out since the epidemic began shows that patients needing the highest level of help soared from 50 on 9 March to almost 200 on 19 March – and doctors fear this spike could turn into a nationwide surge within a few weeks.
Continue reading...As the coronavirus spreads through the British population, there is one fact we can all agree on. Whether we like it or not, society’s greatest taboo – death and dying – has been thrust unequivocally centre stage.
How could it not, when government strategy is to allow the virus to infect huge swathes of the country in the hope of building sufficient “herd immunity” to protect from future harm? The virus has killed an estimated 3.4% of those it has infected, according to the World Health Organization, although this figure is expected to decline as the true number of people infected becomes apparent. Herd immunity, according to Downing Street’s chief scientific adviser, requires a minimum infection rate of 60% of the population. Thus we may face a potential early and unexpected death toll of hundreds of thousands of Britons.
Continue reading...Now, more than ever, the NHS must prioritise care - not just for frail, elderly and vulnerable people but for staff too
There’s a strange mood in the intensive care unit (ICU) where I work at the moment. It’s one of controlled planning, paperwork and people pulling together in ways that on a normal day perhaps wouldn’t happen.
ICUs are as prepared as they can be. Locally business as usual has made way for preparations for caring for high numbers of patients. We are finding every ventilator we may have and identifying every suitably qualified member of staff. We will work together to fill gaps as best we can.
Continue reading...Woman denies posting false information that photo of four-year-old was political stunt
A medical secretary has claimed her Facebook account was hacked after it was used to post false information claiming that a photograph of an ill boy on the floor at Leeds General Infirmary was staged for political purposes.
The woman denied posting the allegation that four-year-old Jack Willment-Barr’s mother placed him on the floor specifically to take the picture which became symbolic of the NHS’s troubles after it appeared on the front page of Monday’s Daily Mirror.
Continue reading...This powerful, immensely moving documentary follows the courageous medical staff who must treat injured children as bombs fall around them
Feras Fayyad, the young Syrian documentary-maker who filmed Last Men in Aleppo (and was himself imprisoned and tortured by Bashar al-Assad’s regime), returns with a chilling, shaming film made over two years inside a Syrian hospital in Ghouta, the city besieged by the Syrian government for five years until 2018.
If there is a chink of hope here it’s Amani Ballour, the hospital’s manager, a paediatrician in her late 20s. “I know this life is tough. But it’s honest,” she says. Her deep sense of purpose is humbling – it carries her through hellish days treating dozens of bloodied and badly injured children. Her gentleness with patients is desperately moving, too.
Continue reading...Damning CQC report on private Cygnet Acer clinic where patients could self harm and one died by hanging
A privately run mental health unit has been banned from admitting new patients after inspectors found numerous safety failings, one of which led to a resident dying by hanging.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has stopped the Cygnet Acer Clinic, in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, from accepting new inpatients. It declared that the facility was “not safe” for people to use.
Continue reading...The anti-medical dogma of Christian Science led my father to an agonising death. Now the church itself is in decline – and it can’t happen fast enough. By Caroline Fraser
When I was a baby, my grandfather delighted me by playing a game. He made a fist sandwich, fingers laced together and hidden in his palms, showing me his thumbs closed upon them. Slowly, he would say, “Here’s the church, and here’s the steeple,” raising his index fingers together to form a peak. Then, throwing his thumbs apart, he flipped his interlaced fingers over, wriggling them and crying out, “Open the doors and see all the people!”
My grandfather was a Christian Scientist. His mother had been a Scientist. His only child, my father, was a Scientist. I was raised to be a Scientist.
Continue reading...Health secretary Matt Hancock has ordered a “root and branch” review of NHS food after two more patient deaths were linked last week to a listeria outbreak. The new deaths bring the number of suspected fatalities to five and doctors have warned that further cases could occur.
Hancock said he was “incredibly concerned” after it emerged the patients were suspected of dying as a result of eating pre-packaged sandwiches and salads linked by the same supplier, The Good Food Chain.
Continue reading...Baltimore hospital filed 2,400 lawsuits often against poor and black patients for unpaid medical bills between 2009 and 2018
Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, filed over 2,000 lawsuits often against poor and African American patients, and including many of their own neighbors, for unpaid medical bills, a new study has revealed.
The hospital, one of the state’s largest, filed 2,400 lawsuits between 2009 and 2018 that totaled $4.8m in alleged debt from patients, according to a report from American unions AFL-CIO and National Nurses United and community advocacy group Coalition for a Humane Hopkins. The median unpaid debt that led to a lawsuit was $1,438.
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