A SENIOR Bradford doctor has revealed the scale of the challenges faced by hospitals as the coronavirus crisis intensifies. 

Amid shortages of equipment and key staff falling ill, the Bradford Royal Infirmary (BRI) has even had to contend with people trying to break in to steal valuable supplies. 

Professor John Wright, an epidemiologist and head of the Bradford Institute for Health Research, which is based at the BRI, has looked after patients in epidemics all over the world. 

In The NHS Front Line series on BBC Radio 4, he has been recording conversations with colleagues as they face the unprecedented challenges of dealing with the virus. 

After the UK-wide lockdown was imposed last Monday, the hospital ramped up measures to stop the spread of Covid-19, including stopping visitors, sealing up 18 entrances, funnelling people through one main door and ensuring staff show their passes.

One incident saw a man dressed in doctor's scrubs and a stethoscope attempt to make his way past a security guard, who demanded to see his pass. When he was caught, he made a run for it.

Hospital scrubs now have to be locked away.

Mel Pickup, head of the Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which counts the BRI among its sites, told Prof Wright: "I think one of the emerging concerns we have is the impact this is having, not inside the hospital, but outside the hospital in the wider community about the availability of drugs that normally would be on the streets for people.

"Those people who have addictions and need to feed those, where do you go if you want drugs and you can't get them on the street?"

She added that she had been on a walk-round, trying to find additional changing room capacity for hospital porters.

"Just as I thought I had cracked it and found this particular space that we were all set to convert into a changing area.

"Someone came along and said 'we've already earmarked that to lock down scrubs' to put scrubs under lock and key because they become a very desirable item."

The programme also heard the lengths some staff have gone to, to ensure they will be as protected as possible.

Prof Wright said supplies of surgical masks were good, but supplies of more effective PPE marks and eye-protection visors were running low. 

Dr Tom Lawton bought industrial masks from Screwfix and found a way to attach medical filters to them, while another went to a builders' merchants and bought 2,000 pairs of goggles.

Meanwhile, Consultant anaesthetist Dr Michael McCooe, who is now in isolation, started looking into ways of sterilising masks, so they could be re-used, and called Whittaker's gin distillery in the Yorkshire Dales.

Mr Whittaker himself answered the phone, and said that his 96 per cent proof gin could be diluted for the purpose and was happy to donate some to the hospital. 

But behind the preparations for treating patients with Covid-19 there are families dealing with unimaginable choices to make in unimaginable circumstances.

Dr Alex Brown is used to telling families that frail, elderly patients are going to die - but not over the phone.

He told Prof Wright: "It is difficult and I think for me particularly as an elderly care consultant, is that we know the people who have Covid-19, who are frail, who have comorbidities, that their survival rate from this is very poor.

"It means you are having to make decisions on people about how you escalate things, about what decisions you make with families about resuscitation - where a month ago we'd sit down with the family, take them through all the various options, now we're often having to do that by telephone.

"It goes against the grain as a clinician who's been doing this for over 20 years, the human aspect of talking to people."

He added: "I had to console a junior doctor who had to ring someone up and say 'I'm sorry but your father has died' when normally in those circumstances, for most deaths in hospital, family members are at the bedside.

"Because of the current situation, that's not possible."

It has also been revealed that the Trust is now taking part in a global study to determine the efficacy of anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine in patients with Covid-19: