Coronavirus: Pandemic effects will last for up to two years, warns doctor who treated first UK patients

The doctor who led the team that treated the UK’s first COVID-19 patients has told Sky News we will be living with the effects of the pandemic for “the next one to two years”.

The stark warning comes just 105 days since the first two patients that tested positive for the virus were admitted to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle.

The unnamed members of the same family were taken ill while staying at an apartment hotel in York and admitted to the specialist centre in Newcastle on 31 January.

The consultant who received the patients was Dr Matthias Schmid, the head of the department of infection and tropical medicine.

He told Sky News the way the pandemic has unfolded so quickly means that their first cases now seem a distant memory.

“It seems an eternity, I have to think back quite a bit but it feels like a year. It’s only been three months,” he said.

“I received the patients, I was the on-call clinician, and at that time it was a novel coronavirus and we didn’t know much about it other than it was coming from China. Our first patients… they were actually quite well.”

The first cases didn’t require intensive care treatment and like the majority of COVID-19 patients that have passed through the doors of the Royal Victoria Infirmary they eventually made a good recovery.

The wave of cases that followed though, and the growing death toll, has shocked every frontline medic.

Dr Ashley Price, another consultant who helped treat the first patients, explained: “It has been astounding and I think about the transition between those first few cases we had. I remember the weekend when it really changed for me. We suddenly had a lot more sick patients and a number of patients suddenly passed away on one of those early weekends.

“It was really hard because we suddenly had to change everything we were doing.

“We went from a really well cohort of patients who had a cough and very little else – one or two of them were a bit more poorly – to having people who had very serious pneumonia.”

Like every part of the NHS frontline they have fundamentally changed what they do to cope with the unprecedented strain, but the number of people admitted to COVID-19 wards in Newcastle is now falling.

Critical care consultant at Newcastle Dr Sarah Platt has dealt with many of the most serious cases that have followed since the first patients.

Just as their teams have adjusted to the new way of working to care for COVID-19 patients, the start of the loosening of the lockdown in England brings with it the risk of a second peak of cases.

“The prospect that we might put ourselves in a situation where we can’t offer the standard of care that we wish to and we train to is horrifying to everyone,” she said.

“That is how important it is – that we don’t do anything that might risk a second surge because if it is worse than the first one then all the good work would be undone, everything that we have sacrificed, everybody over the last few weeks, would be undone by a second surge if it is worse.”

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Dr Schmid believes what happens next depends on clear messaging from the authorities and social responsibility from every citizen.

“I don’t think we will be able to eradicate this disease over the next year or two years. We have to live with it. So our hospital is making plans to live with this for the next year to two years and therefore everybody else has to do that.

“We are in a ‘reset, restore’ recovery – but ultimately I don’t think we know exactly where we are,” he said.

“We are certainly seeing fewer patients now and have reduced our in-patient cohort quite dramatically, and we have hardly anyone on intensive care now so all of this is very good news but it all depends on where we are going to be in the next four weeks and what is happening – are people adhering to social distancing and staying safe?

“There is no fast reset button, it has to be a gradual restart now,” he added.

The hospital trust in Newcastle is part of research into a vaccine for the virus and hundreds of members of staff will be tested as part of the vaccine development.

(c) Sky News 2020: Coronavirus: Pandemic effects will last for up to two years, warns doctor who treated first UK patients