Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Germany’s chief at risk
was under way to get protective equipment to staff on the front line.
He said 2.6 million masks and 10,000 bottles of hand sanitiser had been shipped in the previous 24 hours.
Doctors have warned that a “tsunami” of severely ill patients is about to swamp them as the numbers of people infected in the UK hit 5,000, with the real figure likely to be much higher.
Operating theatres are being transformed into intensive care units.
A group of almost 4,000 NHS workers has launched a desperate plea to Boris Johnson to ensure they have adequate protective equipment.
They have called on the Government to resolve the “unacceptable” shortage of masks, safety glasses, gloves, aprons and protective suits. Cabinet minister Robert Jenrick said yesterday that “by this afternoon” every hospital should have had the “next set” of supplies.
He added pharmacists and GP surgeries had also received equipment, while social care providers would get more in the coming week. The Government is also working to get supplies to homeless shelters and hostels.
Mr Jenrick said the UK was ordering millions of tests that could show whether someone had already had the virus – and these would be available within weeks.
Consultant anaesthetist Dr Tom Dolphin said medics are “deeply apprehensive” about whether intensive care units will cope. Dr Dolphin, who works at a Central London teaching hospital, said it was likely specialists will need to decide who to ventilate. He said: “We’re going to find ourselves at the point where decisions are going to get harder.
“We’re going to have limited resource, and rather than being able to offer it to everybody who needs it, we are probably going to have to prioritise.” As well as being in hospitals, staff have been at risk swabbing the public at drive-through testing sites.
In a letter to MPS, a doctor said: “It’s carnage in A&E. Doctors seeing the sickest patients, all they have is a piece of paper over their mouth. I feel we’re being thrown to the wolves.
Some of us
[will] die.”
Public support for NHS staff includes a huge thank you sign in Manchester.
Germany has banned gatherings of more than two people outside the home.
Italy suffered a further 651 deaths in 24 hours, bringing the total to 5,476 as medics there are over-run.
Mr Johnson said: “Unless we make the heroic and collective national effort to slow the spread, it is all too likely our own NHS will be similarly overwhelmed.”
The World Health Organisation said a vaccine is likely to be at least a year away.