To stop omicron overwhelming the nhs, we need new restrictions now

The mood on the wards could not be darker. We work as fast as we can, but wearily, warily, with teeth gritted and stomachs knotted. Here is a snapshot of the things I’ve heard this week:

“I’ve stopped sleeping”, “I’ve got that sick, sick feeling again”, “I’m scared” and – on endless repeat – “I can’t do this again”. One doctor friend, close to tears, told me: “We stopped

being heroes a long time ago, now we’re just cannon fodder.” Some people are saying they won’t go back there again – to the Covid wards and the Covid ICUs. They say a third redeployment

would break them. Who can blame them? There is only so much a person can take. Personally, the prospect of going through it all a third time has me typing this at 3am, too brittle and wired

to sleep. I may be a palliative care doctor, but I saw enough death and dying in wave one to last a lifetime. Still. It certainly rallied the troops this week when we were sent a letter from

Boris Johnson, hand-addressed to “the whole of the NHS”, that assured us (literally) of his eternal gratitude. I say “sent” – he actually tweeted it. But he did make a prime ministerial

promise, and you know how reliable those are: “I can assure you that this government will do whatever it takes to give you the support you need.”  The very next day, alas, he was up on that

Downing Street podium, joking about “jab-a-thons” and giving Covid “both barrels” and “a left and a right”, yet singularly failing to introduce _any_ new measures to control Omicron’s

wildfire spread, or even to recommend cancelling Christmas parties. As Johnson continued to insist formal restrictions on gatherings were unnecessary, Chris Whitty injected a much-needed

dose of Omicron reality: “This is a really serious threat… Don’t mix with people you don’t have to.”  London is the epicentre of the new outbreak and there, in the last week alone, the

number of people hospitalised with Covid has surged by 26 per cent. This is the start of it, the dying to come. From my patient-facing perspective, it is wild – simply unfathomable – that we

can be walking into another Covid horror show relying solely on booster jabs, when there are so many other prudent measures we could be taking to minimise the loss of life. Generally, I

bristle at military metaphors in healthcare. But this really does feel akin to going over the top – NHS staff being ordered to walk slowly, deliberately, towards the guns and barbed wire by

an Etonian overlord with a toddler’s haircut.  It is hard to convey quite how dire conditions are in hospitals, even with current Covid bed occupancy levels – before Omicron pushes them

upwards. Many of us on black alert – meaning, essentially, full. New patients can only be admitted when others are discharged. Trusts have been forced to repurpose discharge lounges,

offices, theatre recovery areas and even broom cupboards to squeeze in more beds (thus stretching staff even more thinly). Yet still the ambulances sit stacked up outside, unable to deliver

their patients. In this grim context, we need a temporary escalation of Covid restrictions – a two-week circuit breaker, for example, plus immediate government support for the hospitality

industry – in order to protect everyone in need of healthcare. As Covid admissions rise, the NHS’s capacity to deliver high quality care to_ every _patient – whether they have cancer, heart

disease, a stroke or Covid – will only further diminish. All patients will suffer.  Something that really did improve NHS morale this week was Whitty’s withering response, during a Commons

Health and Social Care Committee hearing, to a zombie argument that refuses to die. What would Whitty say, asked Tory MP Dean Russell, to those who claim we are: “prioritising Covid over

other things… Covid over cancer, Covid over other serious issues.” The chief medical officer’s uncharacteristically undiplomatic reply is worth repeating in full: “This is sometimes said by

people who have no understanding of health at all… and when they say it, it is usually because they want to make a political point. The reality is, if you ask any doctor working in any part

of the system, they will say this: What is threatening our ability to do cancer, what is threatening our ability to do all of these things, is the fact that so much of the NHS effort, so

many of the beds, are having to be put over to Covid and we’re having to work in a less efficient way because Covid is there.” That, right there, is the crux of the matter. No-one, believe

me, _wants_ to be treating Covid. Nor does a doctor like me nonchalantly embrace the idea of state encroachment on individual liberty. But a temporary escalation in Covid restrictions is

required to prevent, or at least to minimise, the unspeakable indignity and suffering that occur when a health service is completely overwhelmed.  This is not – and never was – about

something so crass as “protecting the NHS” (a slogan so divisive you could be forgiven for wondering whether the government actually intended to stoke anti-NHS hostility). This is about

protecting each other. The people you love, and the ones you’ve never met. All of us, in it together.