As Covid treatments are changing, fewer patients are becoming seriously ill or dying.
At the start of the pandemic there were no drugs for Covid. In, I stood in a Covid intensive care ward while a doctor, in full PPE, told me they had nothing but oxygen to treat critically ill patients. I watched patient after patient on ventilators being turned on to their fronts to help their lungs take in oxygen.Now things have changed enormously. At the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, the critical care unit looks and feels very different.
"Now we have a range of treatments available which reduce the severity and prevent death in a huge number of patients."Dr Matthias Schmid treated the UK's very first Covid patient in January 2020 at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary "I was only diagnosed with Covid yesterday, and I'm receiving this already," he told us. "It'll boost my ability to fight the virus. It will give it a helping hand."
The focus now is on keeping patients from ever needing hospital treatment. That's where antivirals come in. Through the Antivirals Taskforce, the government has procured nearly five million doses of Paxlovid and another antiviral, molnupiravir. There are still more than 12,000 Covid patients in hospitals across the UK. And there could still be new and concerning variants which cause further waves of infection. If this pandemic has taught us one thing it is to avoid making rash predictions. Coronavirus will flare up again and continue to pose a threat, especially to the unvaccinated and those who have serious underlying health conditions.
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