Coronavirus: ‘Doctors on Covid wards sitting around with nothing to do – whilst NI hospitals are nearly emptied of regular patients’

The doctor, whose identity the News Letter has agreed to withhold, recently performed a shift at a dedicated coronavirus ward in a large hospital and said that in a four-hour timeframe there were three doctors on duty and a dozen other medical staff.

But the ward saw just three patients during this time – and none of them turned out to have Covid-19. The rest of the hospital has been “pretty much closed down” except for the Covid ward and emergency care, they said.

There was so little to do that when a patient did eventually come in there was a “flurry of excitement” and all 15 staff gathered round.

The doctor noted the “very highly-paid” status of the professionals who were manning the coronavirus ward, and said that such quiet levels of patient attendance has “been going on for weeks”.

They said: “We’re not seeing the people we normally see because old people are terrified to be sent to hospital, because they know they won’t see their loved ones should anything happen to them, and they’re afraid they might get infected.”

The doctor added medical staff have been told “if they dare say what is happening on the ground, that they’ll lose their jobs, they’ll be disciplined”.

It is their belief the situation is similar in other hospitals, and they continued: “People need to understand this lockdown is not without very, very serious effects for people’s health and wellbeing – quite apart from the economic effects.

“People are so scared, and they’re not getting the help they need.

“I get it – that the politicians here, in the middle of the whole hysteria, said: ‘We had better lock down, this is going to be serious, we are not going to be able to cope’.

“But the evidence now is absolutely clear: the lockdown is doing at least as much harm as good.

“We need to start getting people back and getting people cared for and getting the damage this has done, undone.”

LEGITIMATELY SICK PEOPLE ‘DO NOT WANT TO SEEM A BURDEN’:

Asked if people were not going to hospital because they do not want to be a ‘burden’ during the crisis, the doctor said: “There is that as well, definitely.

“I know people who are worried about blood in their stool, which is one of the things of bowel cancer. And they’re going: ‘Oh I’ll get it sorted whenever this is over, a couple of weeks won’t make any difference’.

“The hospitals are doing nothing. There would always be a pile of people in ICU because they’re post-op; you know – they go off, get chest infections, and end up in ICU for a couple of days.

“But none of that is happening ‘cause people aren’t getting their routine surgery done, not getting their hips done – anything.”

However the doctor did add there is an area of service which is seeing a surge in demand: psychiatric care (including distressed children with learning difficulties who are not in their usual educational environment).

The doctor’s call for a re-think on the way NHS resources are deployed was echoed today by long-serving GP Dr John Kyle.