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The doctor who led the team treating the first UK COVID-19 patients told Sky News that we will live with the effects of the pandemic for “the next one to two years.”
The severe warning comes only 105 days from the first two patients who tested positive for the virus they were admitted to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle.
Unidentified members of the same family became ill while staying at an apartment hotel in York and were admitted to the specialized center in Newcastle on January 31.
The Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle is where the first identified COVID-19 patients in the UK were treated.
The consultant who received the patients was Dr. Matthias Schmid, head of the tropical medicine and infection department.
He told Sky News that the way the pandemic developed so quickly means that his first cases now seem like a distant memory.
Dr. Matthias Schmid says “there is no quick reset button, it has to be a gradual reset”
“It seems like an eternity, I have to think about it a bit, but it seems like a year. It’s only been three months,” he said.
“I received the patients, I was the doctor on call, and at the time it was a novel coronavirus and we didn’t know much more about it that it didn’t come from China. Our first patients … they were actually pretty good.”
The first cases did not require intensive care treatment and, like most COVID-19 patients who have passed through the doors of the Royal Victoria infirmary, they eventually recovered well.
However, the wave of cases that followed, and the rising death toll, have shocked all front-line doctors.
Dr. Ashley Price, another consultant who helped treat the first patients, explained: “It has been amazing and I think about the transition between the first cases we had. I remember the weekend when it really changed for me. Suddenly we had much more sick patients and several patients died suddenly on one of those early weekends.
“It was really difficult because suddenly we had to change everything we were doing.”
“We went from a very good cohort of patients who had cough and very little else, one or two of them were a little bit poorer, to having people with very severe pneumonia.”
The number of people admitted to the COVID-19 rooms in Newcastle is now decreasing
Like every part of the NHS front line, they have fundamentally changed what they do to cope with unprecedented stress, but the number of people admitted to the COVID-19 rooms in Newcastle is now decreasing.
The critical care consultant in Newcastle, Dr. Sarah Platt, has dealt with many of the more serious cases that have followed from the earliest patients.
Just as its teams have adapted to the new way of working to care for patients with COVID-19, the start of loosening of the running of the bulls in England carries the risk of a second peak in cases.
“The possibility that we can put ourselves in a situation where we cannot offer the standard of care that we desire and train is horrible for everyone,” he said.
“That’s how important it is: that we don’t do anything that could risk a second wave because if it’s worse than the first, then all the good work would come undone, everything we’ve sacrificed, all in the last few weeks, would be undone by a second wave. if it’s worse. “
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Dr. Schmid believes that what will happen next depends on clear messages from the authorities and on the social responsibility of each citizen.
“I don’t think we can eradicate this disease for the next year or two years. We have to live with it. Therefore, our hospital is making plans to live with this for the next year or two years, and therefore all others have to do that
“We are in a ‘reset, restore’ recovery, but ultimately I don’t think we know exactly where we are,” he said.
“We are certainly seeing fewer patients now and we have reduced our inpatient cohort quite dramatically, and we hardly have anyone in intensive care now, so this is all very good news, but it all depends on where we are going to be in the next four weeks and what is happening: do people adhere to social distancing and stay safe?
“There is no quick reset button, it should be a gradual reset now.”
The Newcastle hospital trust is part of the research into a vaccine against the virus and hundreds of staff members will be evaluated as part of the vaccine’s development.
