well in the space of a few weeks the NHS
has been forced to shift its entire
focus really to tackle the coronavirus
crisis we've heard from staff across the
UK about the challenges they face along
with shortages of equipment and
resources and last night our medical
correspondent Fergus Walsh and cameraman
Adam Walker brought you the story of the
doctors and nurses working in the
intensive care unit at University
College Hospital in London that's one of
the UK's leading hospitals and tonight
Fergus reports on the way that the
hospital has had to transform its way of
working at first glance it looks like a
normal hospital but coronavirus has
changed everything
ward after ward has been cleared for
kovat 19 patients I didn't take this
seriously enough Imran is just 37 and
has breathing difficulties due to the
virus you don't know how bad it is until
it actually hits you and so I would
absolutely urge everybody to listen to
the government guidance and stay away
from people he has a wife and two
children everything to fight for I have
felt times where my body has been
willing to just give up completely and
I'm not I'm a very young and fit
individual
from the moment patients arrive at A&E
nurses and doctors face the risk of
infection I do worry about my staff
because they're being exposed to
patients who have a dangerous disease
the man in charge at the hospital
throughout this crisis leads from the
front I'm a doctor myself I work in A&E
with coronavirus patient's I'm I'm also
anxious with on the other hand we are
all professionals we know how to protect
ourselves and we know the risk so we can
deal with this the biggest
transformation has been in intensive and
high dependency care where the number of
beds has increased fivefold with plans
for even more but will it be enough can
they cope with the surge all those
questions really get critical and on
three things really it's people kit and
oxygen we've got enough people that's
difficult because inevitably we've had
staff go off we have currently got
enough oxygen our current problem today
is having enough itu grade type
ventilators coronavirus case if you're
orange you're suspected which is the
very sickest patients will need a
ventilator to breathe for them if you
look at RIT you there are two non corona
patients and both of them longer stay
weaning off ventilator slowly the rest
has been taken over by by corona
we've got another hospital that's doing
urgent cancer but this place is
essentially becoming a huge corona
center yet everyone going into intensive
care must wear full protective clothing
beds have been created in every
available space so this is an
anaesthetic room attached to an
operating theater and just look inside
here this operating theater has now been
repurposed for to intensive care beds I
mean it's actually rather overwhelming
because it just reinforces the level of
threat the level of preparations that
are going on here and just what we are
facing
it's the same layout in 10 operating
theaters leaving just two for emergency
surgery all hospital visits have been
stopped only in exceptional
circumstances might a family member of a
very sick patient be admitted it's the
personal course of what's happening to
patients which is just devastating
sometimes it's really hard because we
can't let all the relatives in to see
their loved ones so while the patients
may not be aware their relatives are
really feeling this like all of us the
doctors wonder when life will return to
normal the whole country knows it owes
an immense debt to NHS frontline staff
putting themselves at risk from
coronavirus day after day to save lives
and Fergus is with me now and that was
yet another stark illustration from you
their focus of the immense pressure on
the the staff in that Hospital other
hospitals too of course on the day that
we've heard the latest official figures
now what do they tell us
well 786 deaths from coronavirus the
highest daily death toll and each one of
those represents a family grieving so an
awful toll but those grim figures could
actually be much worse had the trend
kept rising it could have been far worse
now on cases we had 3634 confirmed
coronavirus cases today that is actually
down and there are tentative signs but
that may be part of a trend we won't
know for a week or so but it's not
accelerating upward listening to quite a
lot of the content and the official
briefing in Downing Street earlier today
there was one very interesting
admission really from one of those
taking part about the comparison between
the UK and Germany yes the chief medical
officer Chris witty said that the UK is
trying to learn the lessons of Germany
which is leading the way on testing so
we're doing now about 14,000 tests a day
so better than we were that's around a
hundred thousand a week Germany can do
five hundred thousand tests a week now
it was right to prioritize hospital
patients and but we've got to do
frontline NHS workers and then anyone
with symptoms in the community community
because it is mass testing combined with
social distancing to bring down the
cases which will enable us to get on top
of this epidemic and get Britain back to
work focus once again many thanks focus
watch there our medical correspondent