Health care workers are exhausted, with little time to recuperate. Staff sickness has reached critical levels. The requirements on the use of protective gear have not yet been reviewed in light of the new strain and may be playing a part in frontline workers contracting the virus. The country’s vaccination rollout needs to be stepped up, and in addition to the elderly and the vulnerable, vaccinating doctors must be a priority. [When it comes to the immediate to mid-term future for the country and its infection rates] we know that mid-January is going to be awful.
Dr Rebecca Lewis, DAUK Secretary
About half of England is under the nation’s strictest lockdown measures, and people have been ordered to stay at home, but the coronavirus is still spreading at an alarming rate.
Hospitals are treating more patients than at any time during the pandemic, the number of new infections has set a daily record, and there is a growing debate about allowing tens of thousands of students to return to classrooms after the holiday break.
The nation’s scientists have said that an apparently more contagious variant of the virus is driving the rise in cases and, with severe restrictions already imposed on more than 48 million people, it remains unclear what other tools the government has at its disposal to get the outbreak under control.
There were 53,135 new lab-confirmed cases reported on Tuesday, the highest figure yet on a single day.
The National Health Service said there were now over 20,000 people in English hospitals, more than at the peak of the pandemic in April. With the government scheduled to meet to evaluate its restrictions on Wednesday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is under pressure to impose another national lockdown and move students — especially older ones in colleges and secondary schools, who may be more easily infected by the new virus variant — to remote learning.
Dr. Rebecca Lewis, a surgeon working in a London hospital and the secretary of the Doctors’ Association, described how health care workers are exhausted, with little time to recuperate. Staff sickness, she said, has reached critical levels. The requirements on the use of protective gear have not yet been reviewed in light of the new strain, she said, and may be playing a part in frontline workers contracting the virus. The country’s vaccination rollout needs to be stepped up, Dr. Lewis said on Tuesday, adding that in addition to the elderly and the vulnerable, vaccinating doctors must be a priority.
Dr. Lewis said she expects worse days ahead. “We know that mid-January is going to be awful,” she said.
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