Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Medics ready to go to war against virus
Doctors and nurses across Kent are on a war footing to fight the spread of coronavirus as infected patients are being treated at every hospitals trust in the county.
Confirmed cases of Covid-19 have already claimed two lives in the region, with medics braced for numbers to soar. Wards have been reconfigured to increase intensive care capacity by as much as four-fold, with extra ventilators brought in and some operating theatres converted.
Staff are being redeployed to help treat coronavirus patients, while some nurses and doctors have been given training so they can care for those most seriously ill. Retired healthcare workers have even answered the call to return to the frontline and help the battle to slow the spread of the deadly infection.
The measures come as the number of confirmed cases in Kent and Medway, at the time of going to press, was 91. The death of a 64-year-old man at Medway Maritime Hospital a week ago was the first in the county.
Two days later, the virus claimed the life of Shirley Brown at Tunbridge Wells Hospital.
With cases expected to rise significantly, a leading Kent doctor has warned people to follow the government’s lockdown rules.
Dr Sara Mumford, the director of infection prevention in Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells, said: “Everyone must stay at home.
“If we all work together we can make a massive impact on the spread of this disease.”
The first case of coronavirus in Kent was confirmed on March 2 when NHS offices at Maidstone Studios confirmed a staff member had tested positive. It would be three days until the infection claimed its first life in the UK. At the time of writing, the national death toll stood at 422, with more than 8,000 positive cases.
London has been the epicentre of the outbreak in Britain, with more than 150 of the deaths occurring in the capital, where doctors tell of hospital wards being overwhelmed.
But Kent’s four hospitals trusts say they are doing all they can to prepare for what is to come.
At hospitals in Margate, Ashford and Canterbury, the number of intensive care beds will double next week from 33 to 66, and then again to 132 in mid-april. The east Kent trust which manages the sites also has its own microbiology lab providing results to quickly identify patients with Covid-19. Vascular surgeon Lal Senaratne works at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital and spoke to this paper after completing a 65-hour shift on Monday.
“I started on Friday evening at 6pm and I’ve just finished now,” the 57-yearold said.
“Today, just before coming to the supermarket, I was at the hospital and there were people working in panic mode.
“Any patient who is unwell with a fever, they panic that it’s Covid. “Most of the time it is not Covid – we don’t have that many people who are sick with it at the moment – but we expect in the coming weeks a number of people to get sick.”