“THIS has been unrelenting.”
Those are the stark words of the chief executive of Bradford’s main hospital on the intense challenges wrought by Covid-19.
Nearly one year on from the first Covid admission at Bradford Royal Infirmary (BRI), doctors and nurses still don their PPE armour as they continue to wage a war against the virus.
The Telegraph & Argus was given access to the hospital to speak to Covid-19 patients about their experience, and their accounts are a sobering reminder of the impact it has had on so many.
Julia Morris, 61, from Odsal, was being treated in Ward 8, what is classed as a downstream Covid ward, when the T&A visited. She was admitted to hospital in early December after initially thinking she had normal winter chest problems, as she has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
But, she tested positive for Covid-19 and has been in hospital ever since, needing assistance to help her breathe.
She said: “It was scary, because there’s people around you that are worse than you, there’s people unfortunately dying at the side of you. You knew what was going on.
"I felt deflated, scared it was going to happen to me.You feel so alone because your family can’t be with you and it’s upsetting knowing the person at the side of you has just died.”
She added: “You feel as if you’re never going to get your breath back again. It’s only these last couple of days that I’ve been able to take my oxygen off. It’s when I walk about, I just still can’t get my breath properly.
"You don’t know whether you’re going to go home or not, when you seeing what’s happening around you – is it going to happen to you? There’s strapping lads up there and they’re finding it difficult to breathe, it’s unbelievable. I know there’s a lot of people still out there that don’t believe in Covid, but it’s definitely here.
“They want to give their head a shake and have another look.”
She described how scary it was seeing other people go home then come back into hospital after a relapse.
“It makes you wonder whether it’s going to happen to you or whether you’re actually going to get out of here,” she said and added: “I feel so sorry for the nurses that are having to go through it everyday. The impact it must be having on them, it’s unbelievable.
“They look absolutely knackered at the end of the shift. It makes you wonder how they’re doing it.”
The great-grandmother urged: “Stay safe because it is about, you can get it. It’s affecting different people differently, some of them are not poorly enough to come in hospital, but the ones that are, they’re going through a rough time.”
Another patient on the ward, grandmother Amita Patel, from Lidget Green.
Despite limiting essential journeys like trips to the supermarket, she was struck down by the virus and was admitted to the hospital in early January, with two stays on ward 31, the hospital’s main Covid ward.
She said she “lost hope” at one point, but took solace in her faith to give her strength.
Visibly emotional as she recalled her experience, she said: “It’s very difficult with Covid, I don’t wish this illness to anybody, I want everybody to be safe and I want everybody to get better, just like I did.”
Mel Pickup, chief executive of the Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said the hospital hadn’t experienced the dreaded post-Christmas third wave, but critical care has still been pressured, numbers of patients needing non-invasive ventilation have been high and there has been the added concern of new Covid-19 strains, with between 50 and 70 per cent of patients having had the Kent variant.
"With every month that passes and we have such still high numbers of Covid patients, increasingly my concern is for the resilience of the staff, because this has just been unrelenting," she said.
In around four week’s time, it will be one year since the first Covid-19 admission - a year full of challenge and great loss in a city hit hard by the pandemic.
With restrictions on visiting still tight, it falls to hospital staff provide the emotional support to patients, on top of the physical effort of the job. Extra psychology staff have been employed by the Trust, but there are fears the pressure will continue beyond Covid and there’ll be scant time for respite.
As someone who has been in the NHS for more than 30 years and trained as a nurse, Ms Pickup said: “I’ve never seen a disease that has such a devastating impact on people who up to that point are quite well. I’ve seen people with great health struck down and devastated by this illness.
"People who run marathons, who can barely walk up the stairs six months later. This is absolutely real and you wouldn’t want to get it.”
But there is hope on the horizon with the ongoing vaccination programme and Bradford having played a key role in Novavax trials.
Ms Pickup said: “The Novavax trial has been really successful.
"We put a lot of effort in making sure that the people we recruited for the trial came from all our communities that we serve and are representative, so that it would work for everybody, and it does work for everybody, but it will only work if they have the jab.”
The T&A has made a donation to the Bradford Hospitals’ Charity.
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