Covid was like a daily terror attack, doctor tells inquiry

Treating patients during the pandemic was similar responding to a regular panic attack, the Covid enquiry has heard.

Giving testimony, Professor Kevin Fong, spoke of unit helium met during a infirmary sojourn being successful "total bits".

The erstwhile nationalist objective advisor successful exigency preparedness astatine NHS England recalled a speech with an intensive attraction doc during a sojourn successful December 2020.

“I asked him instantly what things had been similar and… I’ll ne'er forget, helium replied it’s been similar a violent onslaught each time since it started, and we don’t cognize erstwhile the attacks are going to stop.”

Prof Fong described Covid arsenic the “biggest nationalist exigency this state has faced since World War Two”, and repeatedly broke down connected the basal portion describing what helium had seen and his conversations with different unit members.

During the pandemic, Prof Fong, a advisor anaesthetist, conducted astir 40 visits of intensive attraction units connected behalf of NHS England to connection adjacent enactment to the doctors and nurses moving there.

He wrote reports which were sent backmost to managers including England’s main aesculapian serviceman Prof Sir Chris Whitty.

He said the “scale of death” was “very hard to seizure successful the figures”.

“It was truly, genuinely astounding… We had nurses talking astir patients ‘raining from the sky’, wherever 1 of the nurses told maine they got bushed of putting radical successful assemblage bags.”

“We went to different portion wherever things got truthful atrocious they were truthful abbreviated of resources, they ran retired of assemblage bags and alternatively were stuck with nine-foot wide integrative sacks and cablegram ties.”

“These are radical who are utilized to seeing decease but not connected that standard and not similar that.”

He said that “despite the champion efforts of everyone successful the system” the surge of request for healthcare caused by Covid meant it was “not imaginable to present the modular of attraction that would ordinarily beryllium expected.”

He described the concern arsenic the worst helium had witnessed: "I was connected the country of the Soho bombing successful 1999, I worked successful the exigency section during the 7th July termination bombing with the chopper aesculapian service. And thing I saw during each of those events was arsenic atrocious arsenic truly Covid was each azygous time for each azygous 1 of these hospitals done the pandemic surges.

“It’s achy present due to the fact that it was precise wide what was happening to the patients, it was precise wide what was happening to the staff. The unit were precise injured by conscionable however overwhelmed they were by the full thing.”

At the extremity of his evidence, helium was thanked by the inquiry’s chairwoman Baroness Hallett who said “it was evident however distressing it was for you and reliving specified an ordeal is ne'er easy.”

England's main aesculapian serviceman Prof Sir Chris Whitty, who was adjacent to talk astatine the inquiry, said helium agreed with the grounds "very powerfully laid out" by Prof Fong.

He said that NHS hospitals successful England entered the pandemic successful aboriginal 2020 with a “very low” level of beds successful intensive attraction compared to akin high-income countries.

“That's a governmental choice. It's a strategy configuration choice, but it is simply a choice,” helium told the inquiry.

“Therefore, you person little successful reserve erstwhile a large exigency happens, adjacent if it's abbreviated of thing of the standard of covid.”

Sir Chris suggested that countries similar the UK had nary alternate but to enforce lockdown and different societal restrictions to debar a “catastrophic” magnitude of unit connected the healthcare system.

He accepted that “in galore idiosyncratic cases” doctors and nurses recovered the concern “incredibly difficult” but said without lockdown restrictions “the anticipation is it would person got worse. Not a trivial magnitude worse, but truly rather substantially worse”.