Dr Dolin Bhagawati spoke to LBC News regarding the pressures faced by hospitals up and down the country during this pandemic. He explained:
“None of this is normal in the NHS. At our trust, we have three times the level of ICU patients that we had at the same time last year. We have converted several floors of our hospital to intensive care. We have redeployed multiple members of staff consultants…people from all specialties have been redeployed in the roles that they don’t normally fulfil”
“There is an immediate, short, medium and long term consequence that needs to be looked at. The immediate term consequence is our ridiculously high numbers of coronavirus cases that’s going on at the moment. Our short term goal is vaccination to try and drive that down…and our long term is to deal with our ballooning waiting lists and our mental health crisis”.
He also went on to respond to comments made by a senior MP earlier this week:
“This is basically a crisis situation…I would hope that an elected member of parliament who has people dying in his constituency would help to acknowledge that””It is not an admission of defeat to accept that one was wrong in making comments in the past…that is something which is difficult to do in politics, but unfortunately it is necessary to do in health. Otherwise we don’t learn from our mistakes. And if we do not learn from our mistakes in a pandemic situation, people die.”
