People not wearing masks ‘have blood on their hands’
DOCTOR SAYS ‘SELFISHNESS’ FROM RULE-BREAKERS HAS TO STOP
AN intensive care doctor in London says Covid-19 rule-breakers who are not wearing face masks or following social distancing have “blood on their hands”.
Professor Hugh Montgomery, who works in the intensive care unit (ICU) at Whittington Hospital, in north London, has seen “whole families getting wiped out” and says the “selfishness” people are showing in not following the rules has to stop.
He is “angry” because so many months on, lots of people are still not taking enough precautions to curb the spread of coronavirus and, worryingly, intensive care units are currently “in a lot of trouble”, with “huge numbers [of Covid patients] coming in”.
Prof Montgomery, who also leads a research group at University College London (UCL), told Radio 5
Live on Thursday December 31: “[Anyone] who doesn’t wear their masks and behaves like this, they have blood on their hands, they are spreading this virus, then other people will spread it and people will die. “They won’t know they’ve killed people, but they have.”
A further 50,023 new Covid cases were recorded in the UK on Wednesday, December 30, as well as 981 more deaths within 28 days of a positive test – more than double the previous day’s total and the highest death toll total since April. Explaining how the situation is getting worse, he said: “Emergency departments have seen a tsunami of cases in the last week or two, the wards are flooded, everyone is working at maximum stretch, we’ve had to double up – or sometimes triple up – on consultant staff. “The nursing staff have had to be very stretched – in some areas one nurse sees up to four patients - and the numbers are still rising.”
It makes me actually very angry that people are blaming the virus. It’s not the virus, it’s people.
Prof Montgomery said it was wrong to blame the surge in cases and deaths on the new variant of coronavirus, which was only “slightly” more transmissible and caused the same symptoms.
“It’s making me actually very angry that people are blaming the virus,” he said. “It’s not the virus, it’s people.
“People are not washing their hands, they’re not keeping a twometre distance, they’re not wearing their masks.
“I’ve seen delivery people come into this hospital these last two days with no masks on, as if there is nothing happening here.
“People are not doing what they should be doing.”
The ICU doctor said it is a “myth” that hospitals are overwhelmed with just elderly patients, when actually many Covid patients are younger.
He said: “The people we are getting are indeed, as the first wave, lots of people of my age – I am 58 – and I would say half of the patients are my age or even younger than I am.”
Talking about the future, he said he is “not optimistic in the short term”, but he underlined how important it is to stick to rules.
He added: “The only thing that can make a difference is people following rules.”