GET THE JAG
Medics’ plea as harrowing pics from ICU show unvaccinated patients as young as 30 fighting for their lives in hospital
HARROWING footage from inside an Intensive Care Unit shows patients as young as 30 fighting for their lives, and four out of five patients unvaccinated,
A series of videos have been produced by Liverpool City Council to highlight what has happened to those without a jag.
The film was shot in Royal Liverpool Hospital’s specialist Covid Intensive Care Unit showing PPE-clad medics battling to save lives.
The city has the third highest estimated percentage of young adults yet to receive any Covid vaccine.
There are around 90 Covid patients across the Royal Liverpool Hospital, Aintree Hospital and Broadgreen Hospital, with about 70 new admissions in the week up to December 12.
Last week, Professor Matt Ashton, the council’s director of public health, said that around 80 per cent of Covid patients across those hospitals, who had no underlying health conditions, were unvaccinated.
In the Royal Liverpool Hospital, director of critical care Dr Peter Hampshire said four in five Covid patients in intensive care were unvaccinated. He told council videographer Jennifer Bruce: “It’s shocking to see healthy, young people coming in, early 30s, early 40s.
“Sometimes you see patients who die of Covid and they’re young and you know, it’s extremely upsetting for the staff to see that. Four out of five of our patients have not had the vaccine.
It’s fair to say the vaccine, we know, protects people against severe disease and death.
“So perhaps if those people had had the vaccine, that wouldn’t have happened and their families wouldn’t be where they are. It’s a safe drug, it’s been tested and we know it works. Go and get the jag, get booked in.”
Yesterday, Professor Ashton said: “What we have learned over the last two years of the pandemic is that a rise in Covid-19 cases is followed by a rise in hospital admissions, followed by intensive care cases and then, sadly, deaths.
“There is no doubt in my mind this is a trajectory we will see again as a result of the sheer infectiousness of Omicron.
“We know every infected person infects another three to five people, sometimes more, and that as a result, case numbers in the north-west are doubling every two to three days.” In the ward Bruce was invited to film in, every patient between 30 and 40 was unvaccinated. She wrote: “As I interview a few of the doctors and nurses, I am disturbed by the ages of the patients on the Covid ICU ward: the youngest is 30. “Unvaccinated, with no underlying health conditions. This was repeated across all the interviews, with the oldest patient just 40 years old.” “There’s a sadness amongst the ICU staff – and a sense of frustration. I ask them about it and all of them, once again, say the same thing – it didn’t necessarily have to be this way for these patients.”