First published on Sun 31 Jan 2021 15.31 EST
Critically ill Covid patients are dying unnecessarily because they are refusing to go on ventilators due to unfounded fears that the machines increase the risk of death, senior doctors have warned.
The Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine (FICM), the body that represents the 3,500 doctors working in intensive care across the NHS, has seen an increase in patients wrongly believing that the devices will kill them.
The misconception appears to stem from the fact the death rate in ICUs has fallen at the same time as doctors have reduced their use of ventilators, which can take over the body’s breathing process when disease has caused the lungs to fail.
| UPDATED: 10:02, Sun, Jan 24, 2021
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According to intensive care bed tracking statistics, there were 444 transfers of critically-ill Covid-19 patients in the first 14 days of January alone. This is in contrast to December, when there were 436 transfers for the entire month.