This quote from 5 April 2020, by Mr Matt Hancock, brings back painful memories from five years ago:
We feared going to work. We feared getting sick and we feared that we may infect those around us too, by simply turning up to do our jobs. We distanced ourselves to the extent that some doctors had continents between themselves and their families. We felt guilty when, despite our domestic distancing efforts, our family members at home caught the virus too and suffered.
We had no faith in the paper masks – which were rationed out to those who were felt to need them more than others – and we did not trust the shared plastic PPE, like the face shield, which hung outside the hospital bay filled with COVID-positive coughing people.
Palliative care doctors were among the specialists overwhelmed with patients needing their attention, but with dwindling staff numbers as colleagues themselves fell sick. One consultant said: ‘One of the hardest days of my career to date was helping with the closure of an inpatient facility which had no one left to staff it... phoning the families... trying to answer their bewildered, sobbed questions. “Yes, your mum is moving... yes, it’s right now... no, there’s no visiting of any sort where she’s going... no, you won't see her again.”’
Patients were visited in car parks, over fences and through windows, in a bid to balance the risk of virus transmission versus the consequence of undertreating those needing help.
When we developed symptoms of the virus ourselves, we were made to travel to outdoor testing centres, with one such pop-up site being literally next door to a crematorium. There was no medicine to cure either ourselves or those we tried to treat. We did our best to minimise suffering and we grieved for colleagues as well as patients whom we lost to COVID.
Many of us continue to live with COVID, including students who bravely volunteered to help in hospitals, being left unable to complete their medical studies due to subsequent ill health themselves. Doctors have taken early retirement on health grounds and many have reduced their working hours to cope with their long COVID symptoms.
Many of us feel let down. We remember the weekly spoons and saucepans banging to say thank you, but we couldn’t secure the necessary resources to do our jobs more effectively – there was never enough money for us to do our jobs well enough and this has not changed, despite working through a global pandemic.
We continue to campaign for COVID to be recognised as an industrial disease. We feel that this is the very least this country can do, to look after all those who suffered for our benefit. We will never forget what we went through, what we witnessed, and those we lost.