In U.K. Hospitals, a Desperate Battle Against a Threat Many Saw Coming
Hospitals are straining to cope with a new coronavirus variant, despite warnings last year that more preparations were needed for an expected surge of cases in the winter.
Transporting a patient outside the Royal London Hospital this month. Britain now has nearly 40,000 Covid-19 patients in hospitals, almost double last year’s peak.Credit.Matt Dunham/Associated Press
Published Jan. 21, 2021Updated Jan. 22, 2021
LONDON As a new and more contagious variant of the coronavirus pounds Britain’s overstretched National Health Service, health care workers say the government’s failure to anticipate a wintertime crush of infections has left them resorting to ever more desperate measures.
It is too early to say when the national coronavirus lockdown in England will end, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday, as daily deaths from Covid-19 reach new highs and hospitals become increasingly stretched.
Too early to say when COVID-19 lockdown will end, Johnson says
A nurse treats COVID-19 patients in the ICU at Milton Keynes University Hospital, amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, Milton Keynes, Britain, January 20, 2021. REUTERS/Toby Melville
LONDON (Reuters) – It is too early to say when the national coronavirus lockdown in England will end, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday, as daily deaths from COVID-19 reach new highs and hospitals become increasingly stretched.
Britain posted a fresh record in daily deaths on Wednesday for the second day running, hitting 1,820, figures that Johnson has called “appalling”. The daily death count dropped on Thursday.
Hospitals are straining to cope with a new coronavirus variant, despite warnings last year that more preparations were needed for an expected surge of cases in the winter.
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MILTON KEYNES, England (Reuters) - At Milton Keynes University Hospital in England, it’s a battle between life and death. For those most ill, death is gaining the upper hand.
The latest COVID-19 wave has hit the hospital northwest of London with even more force than the first: younger patients fill its wards and fewer of the sickest people respond to treatment.
Doctors and nurses are grappling with the strain of exhaustion and loss.
Joy Halliday, consultant in intensive care and acute medicine, is in charge of a high-dependency unit for COVID-19. It is a step down from an intensive care unit (ICU), and severely ill patients there are receiving CPAP oxygen.