These NHS heroes have fought the virus longer than anyone – they are mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted but will battle on to save lives.
They work at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary, which treated the UK’s first two Covid-19 cases 12 months ago.
Since then, the hospital’s medics have had a year from hell with hundreds more gravely sick coronavirus sufferers coming through the doors.
Its frontline nurses and doctors are working punishingly long hours to care for and comfort patients who suffer – and sometimes die – without seeing their loving friends and families.
There seems to be no end to the enormous pressure on workers, who are only kept going by hope – hope that the vaccines will one day help the world return to some sense of normality.
One of the staff we spoke to was ward sister Ashley Eglon, 33, who often works 15-hour days, starting at 6am, Chronicle Live reports.
She said: “I’ve never had to deal with anything like this. As nurses, we are such tactile, emotional people.
“We’re used to giving a patient a cuddle if they are upset. The most difficult thing to see is that patients are unable to see their families.
“We have had to tell people over the phone that someone has died – I’ve never had to do that before in my career, I’ve never had to break bad news over the phone.
“Not to be able to console someone as we used to is harrowing and horrible. This has gone on for a really long time now and it just doesn’t feel like it’s letting up.
“The patients are getting younger, 30-year-olds are unwell. Even with the vaccines, we are just in the eye of the storm and it’s scary.
“The days are long. I’m in an hour before I’m due to start and leave long after I’m supposed to leave.”
Ashley, from Jarrow, Tyne and Wear, is terrified she will take the virus home to her 15-month-old son, Albert.
So, like many other staff, she showers before leaving the hospital and puts her uniform straight into a bag to wash – and then showers all over again at home.
Ashley, currently a sister on ward 44, has worked for the health trust for ten years and returned from maternity leave in October to help tackle the pandemic.
She said: “We are doing this in the hope that one day we will go back to some form of normality. Vaccines are the only hope.”
Julie Simpson, 53, a ward housekeeper for 10 years, has been working through the pandemic and her sons, aged 26 and 28, are very concerned about her health.
Julie, of Blyth, near Newcastle, said: “When the first Covid patients started to come, you didn’t have time to think about it. We just felt, ‘We have got to do this, just got to do it’.
"There was no hesitation. My sons were worried about me and asked if I could take time off. I said, ‘I absolutely will not’. It’s my job.
“I was worried about passing the virus on but we wear full PPE.
“It’s hard not being able to comfort the patients like we used to. I’m a hugger but we can’t do that now.
"But the hardest part is not being able to bring their family in to comfort them. I’ve seen patients dying without their family around.
“But we have a fantastic team and everybody looks out for each other.”
Louise Maxwell, 24, of Sandyford, Newcastle, has been a staff nurse for two years.
Originally from Northern Ireland, she has been unable to see her family since the pandemic started. She said:
“One of the most difficult things for me was a couple of months back when three patients died in one day. Their families were brokenhearted and wanted to be there but couldn’t. It’s hard.
“What keeps me going is knowing eventually this will end, and the team keeps you going. I’m mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted – but we have to keep going for the patients.”
Intensive care consultant Dr Sarah Platt said: “This past month or so, we’ve seen an increasing workload every day.
“We are now the busiest we have been in this trust and in these critical care services through the whole of the pandemic.
"We are coping well, both from a delivering good clinical care point of view and in a morale sense. But it’s undoubtedly busier and continues to be quite a difficult environment.”
She urged people to keep following the rules, saying: “We all feel the temptation to bend the rules. Everyone’s had enough of this situation.
“It just now seems to me like one of the most serious times we have been in since the pandemic started. I do think that there’s an end in sight.
“As this peak comes down and vaccination is rolled out, and the summer months come, we may be fortunate that this is the last big surge we see.
“But that, to some extent, depends on doing the best we can for this last, hopefully, push towards a better outcome.”
