I haven’t seen my family in a year ... but I’m proud of what we’ve achieved
THE UNSUNG HEROES WHO DROPPED EVERYTHING TO HELP FIGHT PANDEMIC
“IN THE beginning we didn’t know what we were dealing with,” Alison Hardy explains.
It has been more than a year since her team in the microbiology labs at the Royal Bolton Hospital received their first Covid-19 samples for testing.
In that time, they have gone from being able to test one or two people a day to hundreds.
In fact, over the last 12 months they have tested more than 50,000 patients and other members of staff, stopping potential outbreaks and saving lives.
But, as has been the case across the NHS during the pandemic, their work has come at a personal cost.
Alison, 38, began her job in January last year, one month before the first coronavirus tests came in, and has not spent any time with her family since the scale of the virus became clear.
The M.E.N. met her, and colleagues at the Royal Bolton Hospital, as part of our series looking at different sides of the NHS frontline in the battle against Covid-19.
While scientists in the hospital’s labs might not spend much time with patients, they are still acutely aware of the deadly impact that Covid has had.
“I made the decision in February that I wasn’t going to see my family so I still haven’t seen them,” Alison explained.
“When you work in labs it’s a bit weird because you don’t always have the connection with the patients, you only see a sample and you don’t know who that person is.
“But, every day you’re reporting these results on people and you notice things or hear different things or you occasionally read about them and I know the M.E.N. has done some stories on people who have died.
“It’s really sobering. Covid has changed the way we work, previously we didn’t get to see the impact but it’s had such a massive impact on everyone’s lives.”
A 42-person team runs the lab in Bolton, one of five different laboratories set up around Greater Manchester.
While the team here do not have the largest facility in the region, they now have the capacity to test every patient who comes into the hospital.
However, that was not always the case and when the pandemic first began all tests had to be sent off-site and took a significant amount of time to be analysed and returned, meaning doctors might not know their patient had the virus.
Now there is a 24-hour testing service in operation, with someone in the testing rooms at all times.
It has undoubtedly been a challenge, partly because these labs still serve many other purposes.
Samples are constantly being delivered in sealed containers, with diseases like MRSA, sepsis and urinary tract infections just some of the many conditions that need to be investigated.
In the most dangerous areas, expert scientists clad head-totoe in safety gear handle live samples to test for deadly bacteria like tuberculosis.
The number of people in the facility has expanded during the pandemic, with ten new members of staff added to help out with demand.
Some people who
You care for them all and you want the best for them but some get you on a really emotional level
Dr Katy Edwards
work in the labs have a more direct line to patients.
This includes Dr Katy Edwards, a consultant microbiologist, who is responsible for helping with the running of the labs but also completes ward rounds inside the hospital. She regularly sees the direct impact Covid can have in busy ICU wards, where patients often need the help of ventilators just to keep them breathing.
“It’s hard, especially when it’s young people you see,” she said. “Some people you seem to empathise with more than others for some reason, maybe they have kids the same age as yours. Some of them just get you in a way that other patients don’t.
“You care for them all and you want the best for them but some get you on a really emotional level and there’s been days when I’ve come back and shed a tear because of a story I’ve heard out there.
“Sometimes it can really take you by surprise.”
While the pandemic has brought much misery, it has also highlighted what can be achieved with the health service.
“It’s been like nothing any of us have ever experienced before,” Dr Edwards added. “But, I’ve never seen the NHS pull together like this in my entire career, I wouldn’t have thought it was possible.
“The things we’ve achieved in that space of time are just phenomenal.”
Mike Bancroft. 62, took on a new role as an assistant within the labs once the severity of the pandemic became clear.
He recalls the chaos of a particularly difficult period in June, where the lab had to test 5,000 members of hospital staff in little more than a week. He said: “I just remember these big bags, big bin liners full of samples coming and before we’d even started to get into them the next one would come in. We were absolutely swamped. We eventually managed to get through them but it took maybe eight days.”
Janet Yates, 38, is a biomedical scientist who works alongside Mike.
She has a four-year-old daughter at home, Naomi, but says she does not consider her work in the labs as dangerous, despite being so close to the virus.
“I think you’ve just got to get on with it, I know that might sound awful but it’s had such an impact on so many people that we’ve just got to do what we can,” she said.