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Boris Johnson’s condition is “improving”, with the UK prime minister now “sitting up in bed” in intensive care and collaborating positively with hospital staff, the chancellor said on Wednesday.
Speaking at the daily Downing Street press conference, Rishi Sunak said that despite this progress, Johnson would remain in intensive care. “The prime minister is not only my colleague and my boss, but also my friend, and my thoughts are with him and his family,” he added.
Earlier in the day, Johnson’s spokesman said he was “responding to treatment” and remained “clinically stable.” He is also “in a good mood during his treatment for persistent coronavirus symptoms at St Thomas Hospital” in London, Downing Street said. He received “standard oxygen treatment and breathing without any other help.”
While Johnson continues to receive treatment, the latest figures for the United Kingdom showed that 7,097 patients had died in hospital after testing positive for a coronavirus in the United Kingdom as of 5 p.m. Tuesday, an increase of 938 from the previous day, the largest daily increase so far.
Stephen Powis, medical director of NHS England, said at the press conference that the blockade and social distancing measures were working. “We are beginning to see a plateau: the first signs of a plateau of infections and hospitalizations,” he said, pointing to charts showing the latest data.
The prime minister has been in the hospital since Sunday night and was transferred to intensive care on Monday when his condition worsened. He has not been diagnosed with pneumonia or put on a ventilator.
His spokesman declined to say whether the symptoms of high temperature and cough had subsided, or whether the prime minister had taken test drugs to fight the coronavirus.
Johnson is not “working” at the moment, but “has the ability to contact those he needs,” Number 10 said. In his absence, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is filling in when necessary. Johnson “will continue to follow his medical team’s advice” on what he can do.
When he embarked on his third day in intensive care, doctors warned of a long recovery ahead. Alison Pittard, dean of the College of Intensive Care Medicine and doctor of intensive care at Leeds General Infirmary, cautioned that a full recovery from intensive care treatment can often take 12 to 18 months.
However, patients can be expected to return to work long before they “fully” recover and see that they can withstand exactly the same workloads and exercise regimens that they used to maintain before entering intensive care.
He confirmed that a patient who had spent seven days in intensive care could “on average” expect to return to work within seven weeks, but that in some patients it could be half that time.
That said, defining “recovery” was important, and that full recovery, in which a patient returns to normal life, takes much longer. Dr. Pittard warned that Johnson could experience a “drop” in morale after his initial recovery was complete.
“I will see patients in my clinic six months after ICU discharge, and when they were sent home the first time, they had a fairly rapid improvement in their physical condition, measurable on a daily basis,” he explained.
“This encourages him to improve, but after about six months that recovery stabilizes and it’s harder to see that improvement, and patients get a little low at this point.”
He added that making difficult predictions for Covid-19 patients was impossible, given the limited information available on patients recovering from severe episodes of the disease.
“People behave very differently when they have Covid-19,” he said. “Some need a little oxygen and they are fine. Others deteriorate very quickly and we cannot predict who will deteriorate and use a fan. “
Early data from the National Center for Intensive Care Audit and Research has shown that only 32.7 percent of ICU patients receiving invasive ventilation leave the unit alive, compared to 83.8 percent of those, such as Johnson, who receive “basic” ventilation.
On the downside, Covid-19 is causing patients to experience greater complications, including blood clots and kidney problems, than patients receiving intensive care as a result of viral pneumonia caused by the standard flu.
“Chances are if you have Covid-19 compared to a flu virus, it will stay in the ICU longer than with a normal flu virus, and it will probably take longer to recover,” added Dr. Pittard.
“What has become evident over time is that the way the body responds to this virus is different from the way it responds to a normal influenza virus.
“So we are seeing abnormalities in the clotting systems and clots in the blood vessels that supply the lungs, and that is why we believe that patients have such depleted oxygen levels, and this is not something we normally see.”
Other recovery variables include the psychological impact on patients, Dr. Pittard said, with some patients suffering from a form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of their experience in an intensive care room.
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“There is a great psychological element in having been seriously ill. Some get a PTSD-like image, and this group of patients comes home and only because they have been involved in an unusual situation do they need special support, ”he explained.
But he concluded that Johnson’s stressful job would not necessarily impede his recovery.
“Stress is relative. I am an intensive care consultant and people often say “I couldn’t do my job”, but for me it is what I am trained to do. It’s not stressful for me. For some people, that “stressful job” may be their comfort zone. “
