The NHS workers wearing bin bags to protect themselves from coronavirus
As the death toll from coronavirus continues to climb, hospitals across the UK are working flat out to create more intensive care beds for those who are critically ill. Speaking to the BBC, one intensive care doctor describes the crippling reality of a lack of support and equipment faced by some health-care workers in England.
However, nothing Dr Roberts describes is quite as alarming as the fact that these medical professionals, who continue to care for critically ill patients for 13 hours every day, are having to resort to fashioning personal protective equipment out of clinical waste bags, plastic aprons and borrowed skiing goggles.
Dr Roberts says her hospital has not received anything from the government, and what they do have is causing concern. Although colleagues continue to visit, as with all other patients, no relatives are allowed anywhere within the hospital. NHS England says it has no record of how many medical professionals have been admitted to hospital after contracting coronavirus at work.However, the two hardest-hit countries in Europe are counting. Spain's emergency health minister announced on 27 March that more than 9,400 health-care workers had tested positive, and in Italy, as of 30 March, more than 6,414 medical professionals were reported to have been infected.
Extra intensive care beds, set up in several operating theatres and wards, have nearly doubled the hospital's capacity to support critically ill patients, particularly those who can't breathe for themselves and need to be put on a ventilator.
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