I am a physician and epidemiologist. I grew up with a thirst for excitement and adventure. When I was a medical student, I was drawn to the exoticism of tropical infections and the red, sunburnt earth of Africa. My studies in the NHS taught me about Western diets, bad lifestyles and the centre. Diseases and cancers that inevitably cause in our aging populations. Chronic diseases whose symptoms can simply be treated, but rarely cured. Infectious diseases were another planet and affected other young people whose lives we could save with undeniable medicines and vaccines.
I met Helen, my wife, when she was a fourth-year medical student and we made a pact to flee together to Africa as soon as we finished our graduate exams at the hospital. After ten years of training, we got married and went for a run. a rural African hospital, where we faced cholera outbreaks, the worst droughts in human history, and witnessed the devastating tsunami of HIV/AIDS that swept across the continent. While we were back in the UK to continue our work as NHS doctors, we have maintained a permanent link with Africa: when in 2014 a call was made for NHS volunteers to help with the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, I worked with the British Army to set up an Ebola Treatment Centre in the middle of rural Sierra Leone and run it with a team of foreign staff.
So when I first heard about Covid-19 in medical journals, my 25 years of experience with epidemics started flashing red lights and setting off alarms. Obviously, it’s something different. A highly contagious disease that is spreading rapidly, not only in deficient countries, but is on the rise. It is declining at an exponential rate: first gradually, then very suddenly.
I work at a giant training hospital in the north of England, Bradford Royal Infirmary. As the virus spread inexorably through my wards, I knew better than anyone what was in store and began diary and record daily for the BBC to capture the effect of the outbreak on workers and patients.
It begins with Karen, our housekeeper, and her worries about her husband and family. His concern about bringing home a deadly infection resulting from his paintings cleaning our poisonous rooms, a concern that in the end proved tragically prophetic.
I offer a mind-blowing attitude as we exercise and rehearse for an emergency that we’ve noticed in graphic detail in reports of overflowing Italian hospitals, but can’t believe in our Yorkshire home. In a strange and scary new world where doctors are scrambling to create another, larger care unit from scratch; there is a shortage of ventilators and even oxygen; Staff don’t know what PPE they might get or when they might arrive, and family members are told they may not be allowed into the wards, even if those enjoying themselves are dying.
I stay with patients from their death-defying stories of survival to the moment they first felt affected. I take on the role of a medical detective to track the spread from local choirs to family funerals: far-reaching events that inflamed dozens of people. in quick succession, with tragic consequences.
I share the worry and worry of my colleagues as they face the greatest threat to their lives and the lives of their loved ones, themselves threatened on the frontline of the NHS. They tell their harrowing stories of courage and creativity in the face of wondrous adversity with remarkable candor.
My diary reflects the urgency of our race to find cures for Covid-19, from new drugs to old favorites. It describes our doctors’ ingenuity with CPAP machines at home to save lives in the hospital and donating alcohol from gin distilleries to sterilize our ventilators.
I describe the panic in our communities as fake news spreads like wildfire, scaring patients and preventing them from coming to the hospital and prompting threats against our staff.
This is a Shakespeare tale with a cast of many, many people, with its own deeply private story to tell. Above all, it is a unique social and medical tale, which represents the greatest risk to humanity in a hundred years.
This is the story of the Covid-19 crisis that stretched before the lockdown to the moment when Britain reached one of the worst death rates in the world. Covid-19 has gained overwhelming media coverage. However, with so much political debate, hypotheses and the war of words between scholars and the actual data they convey, thousands of human stories have been lost. This is an attempt to tell some of them through the reports of a single hospital.
My journals will offer a review of the current crisis, beginning on March 12, four days before the government presented the first of its reports on the coronavirus response. I tried to detail the procedure week after week as the hospital prepares for the expected arrival. of the first patients.
For everyone involved, the experience is both new and confusing. As the pandemic spreads, I’m looking for its effects in the hospital and in Bradford, a proud city I love and now know so well. . Over the years, we have built strong bonds through our incredible Born in Bradford project, which follows the lives of 14,000 newborns and their families. We faced COVID-19 in combination and, from the beginning, we have been united in our efforts.
As we combine, strong characters and bonds emerge, and stories of courage and commitment abound. Our 360° view is full of heartbreaking moments, from the couple who fell in love as teenagers and are now battling covid-19 together, to young people. lovers who got married in the hallway hours before one of them died from the disease. There are also kinder moments, with an investigation being added to shed light on the case of the choir that coughed in January!
And I’m following up with some of those who left Bradford Infirmary after treatment with Covid-19 – some are debilitated and would possibly have to deal with long-term fitness disorders. Others returned to their homes, families, or streets they had lost. the ones we enjoy. Individuals and communities are permanently reshaped through their experience with the virus. It’s not just stories of committed, hard-working doctors and nurses – it’s the stories of the entire network and it’s this built-in story that I need to tell. .