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Having once again surpassed Italy in terms of the highest number of casualties in Europe, the UK is at the epicenter of the continent’s fight against COVID-19. The daily number of infections is breaking all records: the disease affects one in 50 people in England, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has closed schools this week and told residents to stay home.
Medical staff warn they may have to stop admitting people to hospitals if the latest quarantine fails to curb a new strain of the virus that was found in south-east England last month quickly enough.
In winter, the health services already have more work than they can cover. The virus means that more and more patients wait in corridors, while others have to be treated simply in ambulances. The British Medical Association, which represents doctors, says the National Health Service is going through a crisis as workers themselves get sick and burn more often as infections multiply.
“The patients are reaching thousands,” said Tom Dolphin, 42-year-old consultant anesthesiologist at London Hospital. “It’s worrying that we probably haven’t seen the peak yet, all those patients that got infected over Christmas and New Years.”
During these ten months of confusion in handling the pandemic, the UK government has managed to preserve the country’s healthcare system and become the first Western country to start immunizing its citizens. However, this achievement now runs the risk of remaining an empty victory, as the accelerated vaccination program competes with an uncontrolled virus.
In recent weeks, doctors have lobbied Johnson to act across the country. But last weekend, the government proposed to leave the schools open.
The new treatments mean that most COVID-19 patients survive, but many still have to stay in the hospital due to breathing difficulties. It also puts pressure on hospital capacity. The health system entered the pandemic with a shortage of around 40,000 nurses.
For nurse Stuart Tuckwood, a tighter quarantine provides at least some relief as the country desperately waits for vaccination to finally start to pay off.
“People know how bad things are and how things will get worse if the numbers continue to rise,” said Tuckwood, who works at a hospital in the south of England and also represents the nurses union Unison. “We cannot expect the vaccine to be a miracle cure. We should not think that health services and personnel will be effortlessly managed from now on.”
According to the Bloomberg Coronavirus Tracker, the number of victims in Great Britain has already reached 76,423: in recent days, this figure has exceeded the death rate in Italy. The number of daily cases rose to nearly 61,000 on Tuesday, the highest number since the coronavirus swept across Europe and the UK accelerated testing.
Johnson said in a televised speech on Monday that the number of Covid patients in England’s hospitals is currently 40 percent. higher than during the first peak in April. Intensive care units were already overcrowded during the holidays and figures published in the Health Service Journal show that at the end of December they were more than 110 percent in London and the south-east of England. planned capacity. Some patients had to be transferred for a few hours to hospitals in the south west or north of England.
Such a dramatic escalation led Johnson to bet on several fronts. The government has not only reintroduced the national quarantine, but is also trying to increase the number of people receiving the first dose of the vaccine as soon as possible by forgoing the second vaccine for the time being.
© PA / Scanpix
The goal is to expand the stock of two available vaccines, one from Pfizer Inc. and its partner BioNTech SE, and the other from AstraZeneca Plc and the University of Oxford. The move was supported by some health experts, but raised concerns among others, including Pfizer.
The goal is to maximize the number of vulnerable people who will be granted at least some of that protection in the shortest time possible. The UK health authorities have observed data showing that vaccines provide sufficient protection after the first dose, while the second is important over a longer period of time.
Johnson said Tuesday that 1.3 million people, or nearly 2 percent. population has already been immunized: this is the highest rate in Europe. January 5, Germany had vaccinated 317,000 people and France just 2,000, according to Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker. The London government has set a goal of vaccinating nearly 14 million people by mid-February.
The truth is, the British simply have no other choice. According to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, new infections in the UK (720 per 100,000 population in 14 days) more than doubled in Italy or France at the end of December.
According to NHS providers, the number of coronavirus patients in hospital beds today is almost 9,000 higher than on Christmas Day, equivalent to almost 18 hospitals.
There is mounting pressure on doctors and nurses, and “this really leads to the need for innovative thinking,” said Doug Brown, director of the British Society of Immunologists. “If we don’t, the risk will be much higher.” In a normal world, a country would adhere to the dose tested in clinical trials, he notes. “But we live in an abnormal world right now.”
Support from the National Health Service resonates across the UK. In the spring, during the first quarantine, people stood on their doorsteps every Thursday night and applauded health workers, while children drew and pasted rainbows on the windows. The government hopes that the tired nation will support the doctors again, as the NHS now has to resist and vaccinate the country’s population.
Finding and hiring enough staff to vaccinate about 2 million people a week is no easy task and will have a huge impact on the health service, says Richard Sloggett, a former special adviser to Secretary of Health Matt Hancock.
“Of course, right now, it looks like we are moving to the point where we are building a home in the vaccine program,” said Sloggett, principal investigator for Policy Exchange brainstorming.
The quarantine restrictions are expected to take effect before the hospitals break down, notes anesthesiologist T. Dolphin, who is also a member of the BMA board. The restrictions will be in effect in England until at least mid-February, although Johnson made clear at a press conference Tuesday that there may still be many months of quarantine ahead.
“We are approaching the point where health services will no longer be what we would normally consider appropriate for the UK,” said Dolphin. “It is, in fact, suitable for any country.”
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