The theatre and endoscopy staff at the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust have thanked and applauded the general public for staying at home. In a video posted online, matron Vicky Oluwole says: 'We, the staff of Lewisham endoscopy theatres, are thanking you for clapping for the NHS. Now, we are clapping and saying thank you for staying at home'
Continue reading...Category Archives: NHS
UK woman wins claim for NHS to pay US surrogacy costs
Woman was left infertile after NHS trust failed to detect signs of cervical cancer
A woman who wants to have surrogate children through commercial agreements in California has won her claim that the NHS should pay for the treatment.
The woman, identified only as XX, cannot bear her own children following earlier medical mistreatment.
Continue reading...NHS nurse applauded by family as she returns from work amid coronavirus crisis – video
An NHS nurse working during the coronavirus outbreak in the UK received a standing ovation from her family as she returned home from a shift.
Her son shared a video on Twitter and said: 'We as a family have been welcoming our mum home from work as a hero. She is a nurse in the NHS in Britain and is working so hard every day! We will continue to do this every time she returns home from work'
Continue reading...My NHS colleagues are committed but we are at maximum stretch
Psychiatrist and former minister Dan Poulter says the crisis is unprecedented, but his fellow health workers will see it through
As I walk across the hospital complex and pause to look at the London tower blocks in the near distance, life could not be further removed from the green benches of parliament, a mere 45 minutes walk away. Covid-19 has changed everything. In mental health services, in the central London epicentre of Britain’s outbreak, we are used to caring for people who have severe mental illness, but we have been confronted with a new reality of caring for people who are also infected with coronavirus.
Hundreds of healthcare colleagues are already off sick. Others are self-isolating because a family member is showing symptoms. Our service is at maximum stretch.
Continue reading...UK can keep Covid-19 deaths below 20,000, says medical director
Professor Stephen Powis has said the national effort can work if everyone plays their part
Every citizen in the United Kingdom must play a part if the number of deaths from coronavirus are to be kept below 20,000, the national medical director has said.
The call for a national effort to reduce deaths came as the total who have died rose by 260 since Friday to 1,019. In total, 17,089 have tested positive in the UK.
Continue reading...Applause for NHS was bittersweet | Letter
For Corinne Fowler, the clapping event transcended the bitter rows of the last few years, but also caused a pang of sorrow
The mass clapping event (Millions of Britons clap for carers on coronavirus frontline, 26 March) was bittersweet and loaded with irony. It was an unprecedented show of collective gratitude, inspired by a Dutch woman living in the UK, by a nation whose Brexit vote caused a shortage of medical staff as it sent EU citizens away. A clapping nation whose government created a “hostile environment” to banish the Windrush generation, who made vital contributions to the NHS.
I also thought of supermarket workers on low wages now risking life and limb, generally with no gloves or masks. There is little consideration for their safety. If it weren’t for them we would not be eating.
Continue reading...Millions of Britons step out to clap for NHS staff on coronavirus frontlines – video report
At 8pm on Thursday, millions of people stood at their front doors and open windows, in gardens and on balconies, to raise a thunder of gratitude for those working on the frontline of the fight against coronavirus
Continue reading...Clap for carers: applauding the NHS – in pictures
People across the UK have taken part in a mass round of applause in support of the NHS workers battling the coronavirus pandemic.
In the Clap For Carers initiative people took to their doorsteps and balconies applauding, banging pans and letting off fireworks. Notable buildings around the country were also lit up in blue
Continue reading...Boris Johnson: 405,000 NHS volunteers signed up in 24 hours – video
Boris Johnson has thanked the 405,000 people who have responded to the government's call for volunteers to help the NHS support vulnerable people during the coronavirus crisis. On Tuesday, health secretary Matt Hancock asked for 250,000 volunteers
- UK coronavirus live: tests prioritised for NHS workers, 'not available on the internet next week'
- UK coronavirus mass home testing to be made available 'within days'
Matt Hancock calls for 250,000 volunteers to help NHS during coronavirus crisis – video
The health secretary, Matt Hancock, has announced a new scheme to recruit 250,000 volunteers to support people who are unable to leave their homes during the coronavirus pandemic. The volunteers will help the NHS and local services by delivering shopping and medicines to vulnerable people. Hancock also announced that an extra 35,000 staff, including final-year medical students and retired doctors and nurses, are joining the NHS to fight the virus.
Continue reading...Coronavirus: doctors and nurses in Belfast post message urging public to stay at home – video
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...UK military planners drafted in to help feed vulnerable in Covid-19 outbreak
Food stockpilers told they should be ‘ashamed’ as prime minister urges Britons not to make mother’s day visits
Key military officials are to help ensure food and medicines reach vulnerable people isolated at home during the coronavirus crisis, as part of a nationwide campaign to protect more than a million people most at risk of being hospitalised.
Community pharmacies, voluntary groups and food retailers are in talks with the government to ensure essential items reach people being told to remain in their home. Those believed to be at most risk are being contacted on how best to protect themselves, and being strongly advised to stay home for at least 12 weeks.
Continue reading...Doctors warn coronavirus could overwhelm NHS ‘within weeks’
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...‘My Covid-19 vlog’: junior doctor shares insight amid coronavirus outbreak – video
NHS junior doctor Ed Hope has updated his YouTube channel by vlogging about his experience on the front line of the coronavirus emergency as Covid-19 cases grow in the UK, covering panic buying to specialist mask fitting.
Dr Hope's Sick Notes is a YouTube channel that usually has a 'light-hearted look at hospitals', however the doctor has got serious by looking at the NHS approach from the inside
Continue reading...As fearful Britain shuts down, coronavirus has transformed everything
It’s too early to say whether the country is united but the cracks are beginning to show
Has the national life of this country ever been transformed so completely and at such a speed? In the course of a week, the British landscape has changed and changed utterly. Once crowded streets are deserted. Schools are closed, summer exams cancelled. Football grounds are shuttered and padlocked. Theatres are dark, cinemas silent. They’ve even stopped changing the guard at Buckingham Palace – and from Friday night the pubs are shut.
The economy has juddered into reverse, set to shrink by 15% according to some estimates – a collapse more catastrophic than the Great Depression. Each day has brought news that, in normal times, would constitute an epochal, ground-shaking development but which, in the current climate, has struggled for airtime. The Bank of England cut interest rates to their lowest level since the Bank was founded in 1694, and announced an infusion of £200bn. The pound slid to its lowest level against the dollar since the mid-1980s. Meanwhile, a Conservative government has torn up 40 years of small-state, free market doctrine, first promising to spend a staggering £330bn, and then on Friday evening committing to pay 80% of the wages of workers who have had to down tools, with “no limit” on the funds available. The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, did not exaggerate when he said nothing like this had ever been done before. Even hardcore socialism usually stopped short of calling for the government to take on the payroll of private sector employers. Now it’s Tory party policy.
Continue reading...‘Coronavirus has hospitals on a war footing’: A&E doctor calls for urgent help – video
A&E doctor Nishant Joshi has highlighted the plight of NHS staff facing a shortage of protective equipment while on the frontline of the coronavirus outbreak. Joshi, who works at Luton and Dunstable general hospital, said: ‘If we don’t have masks to protect ourselves … It’s just bits of cloth. If that’s the problem at the start, what’s it going to be like in a few months’ time?’
Continue reading...‘We’re clearing the decks’: a GP on watching the coronavirus pandemic unfold
Despite the growing death toll and the unprecedented speed at which events are moving, the past few weeks feel like just a prelude of what is to come. By Gavin Francis
On 13 January, a bulletin from Health Protection Scotland was sent to all GP practices in the country describing a “novel Wuhan coronavirus”. I work in a small clinic in central Edinburgh with four doctors, two nurses and six admin staff. It was the first time I’d heard of the virus. “Current reports describe no evidence of significant human to human transmission, including no infections of healthcare workers,” it said reassuringly.
I cast my mind back to the Sars coronavirus of almost two decades ago, and briefly wondered how quickly the spread of this coronavirus would be stopped, as Sars was. A seafood market had been closed and sanitised. The bulletin said that although Wuhan was a city of 19 million people, there were only three flights per week from there to the UK, and the likely impact was “very low”. I shrugged, and carried on with my work.
Continue reading...UK ministers will no longer claim ‘no successful examples’ of Russian interference
Change of official line is first admission that Kremlin may have distorted UK elections
Ministers have been told they can no longer say there have been “no successful examples” of Russian disinformation affecting UK elections, after the apparent hacking of an NHS dossier seized on by Labour during the last campaign.
The dropping of the old line is the first official admission of the impact of Kremlin efforts to distort Britain’s political processes, and comes after three years of the government’s refusal to engage publicly with the threat.
Continue reading...We can’t be squeamish about death. We need to confront our worst fears
Patients, their families and their doctors need to be open about the inevitable as the virus sweeps through our population
• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage
• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage
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...Inside an ICU: how long can we stay calm in the face of the coronavirus crisis?
Now, more than ever, the NHS must prioritise care - not just for frail, elderly and vulnerable people but for staff too
- ‘Unlike anything seen in peacetime’: NHS prepares for surge in Covid-19 cases
- Coronavirus – latest updates
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...