One doctor’s story: ‘We don’t have the masks, goggles – or the staff’

A senior consultant at a leading hospital for respiratory conditions such as pneumonia and cystic fibrosis talks to the Observer
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NHS staff are asking the same questions as everyone else about coronavirus. How deadly is it? How do we protect ourselves? Are the government’s tactics right? And how will the health service cope when – and it is when – it leaves large numbers of people seriously ill, many fighting for their lives? These questions are even more pressing for us because within two weeks we will be part of the frontline against a threat that we’ve never seen the like of before.

I’m worried that our hospital’s beds are already 98% full. We are full of “social patients” – people medically fit to go but who can’t be discharged because there isn’t a place in a care home for them, or the care package to allow them to go home hasn’t been sorted. So where are all the people needing life-or-death care from Covid-19 going to go?

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