Doctors with very little protection from Covid-19. Now only two out of 10 doctors well enough to work.

My daughter has some friends, who are nurses and they are all off sick. There are not enough masks for the nurses to wear.

This is a dire situation.

Well the Chancellor says everything is fine!
Catherine McKinnell Chair, Petitions Committee
The Chancellor has talked about courage, but I will tell him what takes courage: fighting this pandemic on the frontline without adequate protective clothing. Will he commit right now to doing whatever it takes to ensure that every single frontline healthcare worker has the protective clothing they need if they are working exposed to this virus?

Sunac's reply
My right hon. Friend the Health Secretary is working around the clock to support our healthcare workers to have everything they need to do the vital job that they are doing for us. They will get whatever support that they require.

Perhaps loosing so many after Brexit might have something to do with it. We could do with them now.

“As ye sow so shall ye reap”

If Mr Sunac would like to contact me I would be very grateful to hear exactly how healthcare workers 'have everything they need'.

The knock-on effect of this is horrendous and all through penny-pinching and shortsightedness. Eight doctors are out of action and their families bracing themselves for infection.

The issue of equipment comes up time and time again. They are insistent that there is sufficient, but I suspect when this is over and various enquiries take place, they will tell a different tale.

I desperately hope that the doctors are wrong but I’m not convinced they are.

Ventilators are made in the EU. Germany mainly. Ironic. When he heard JCB had been asked to make ventilators he said “ they’d be ok at burying the bodies” ( sorry but it is his dark humour) .

When I read threads on here about going to parties and hairdressers that makes me want to scream too Candelle have people no respect for medical staff.

The above was my OHs comments

There are a lot of people with illness at present, most of them it’s normal colds and flu but with all this Corona scare it’s getting chaotic. The way it’s growing the system will be close to breakdown next week

So what was actually kept in the warehouses that were specifically set up for when there was a pandemic?

My student medic dd is working on the front line of CV in a hospital. Earlier this week she and other staff had no PPE to wear because visitors to patients had taken it all, gloves, scrubs, masks, the lot!

The hospital were able to resupply later on that day but that’s the kind of behaviour the NHS is facing. Some of the public needs to take a good look at itself.

If you listen on youtube to Michael Osterholm he talks about the lack of forward thinking by everyone. He has been warning about a flu pandemic since 2005. He also mentions things like one place in Puerto Rico manufactures all the saline bags in the world (well 85%) and that he said if a hurricane went through there there'd be a shortage and sure enough some storm or earthquake happened and there was a world shortage of saline bags. Apparently so much of the world's medicine and equipment comes from China. If their whole workforce goes down - we're in big trouble. It isn't just our government and I'm not trying to defend them but the whole world system isn't geared for something like this.

Surely in these times of computers, easy stock-checking should be possible?

There are reasonably often epidemics if not pandemics and I would expect our Government (whom I would normally support) to have a supply of materials to keep front-line staff supplied with. at least, the basic necessities of protection.

My daughter aside, the population around her surgeries now has limited access to a GP as eight out of ten doctors are also ill.

May I add that, sick as she is, she is working from home, triaging patients. All day and most of the evening too. She feels ill but still is working away.

Shouldn't people like this have been better protected? It is not rocket-science, just penny-pinching short-sightedness.