Liverpool's hard-hit hospitals are now down to double figures of covid patients as the city's main trust boss reflects on 'the most difficult year in the history of the NHS.'
It is 12 months to the day since the country entered the first official nationwide lockdown as the coronavirus situation began to spin out of control.
It has been a horrendous year for the nation and Liverpool and Merseyside have been particularly hard hit.
Liverpool's main hospitals were at the forefront of the second and third waves, but speaking on the anniversary of the lockdown, the trust's boss said things are now much improved.
Tristan Cope, medical director at the Liverpool University Hospitals Trust said: "The number of covid patients in the hospitals is now below 100, we are into double figures.
"The Intensive Care Units are back within their original footprints, we have closed down the extra capacity we created."
This news represents a key milestone for a trust that was caring for a total of 569 virus patients in late January and had been forced to open multiple makeshift intensive care units to try and cope with the soaring numbers.
On the anniversary of the first lockdown, Dr Cope reflected on those early moments of the pandemic and how his teams have coped with the enormous challenge that followed.
He said: "We'd been watching what was going on in China, once it started spreading we felt there would be nothing stopping it.
"I think many of us were watching with astonishment at the lack of reaction, we would have wanted that to happen more quickly.
"Reflecting back on the first lockdown moment now, it brought an enormous sense of relief for us.
"You can argue about whether it should have been sooner but at least it happened, we were very concerned that we were going to be overwhelmed by a tidal wave of very sick patients.
"We were hearing what was going on in Italy, Spain and in London ahead of us - we were all really anxious of what it was going to bring."
He said that while Liverpool wasn't hit as hard by the first wave, which landed in London first - what would follow in the autumn would see the city thrust to the very frontline.
He said: "We got hammered by the second wave and Liverpool was properly at the forefront of that, we were the first hit and one of the hardest hit.
"And we never really had an interval between the second wave and the third wave in early January - so our staff in Liverpool and in much of Merseyside have had about five months of fairly solid proper covid pressures.
"Things are now really improving and we are coming out of it, but It has been an extraordinarily challenging year, the most difficult 12 months in the history of the NHS I think.
"Now it feels as though there is real light at the end of the tunnel, it feels like we are coming out of it."
Paying tribute to his colleagues, he added: "I'm not prone to emotional superlatives very often, but I couldn't be prouder of all of our teams at the trust.
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"People have really pitched in to help out across the board, people were coming in voluntarily at weekends to help other departments - it has been an amazing response, we wouldn't have been able to get through this without people stepping up.
"The flip side is that we've got a lot of people who are very tired now. This has been unrelenting demand for so long.
"We've got staff who are exhausted - they have had a really stressful time. For some there has been a big emotional toll as well of course."
