Wolverhampton Express and Star hears stories from the frontline of Covid-19 battle

Behind Local News
Behind Local News UK
2 min readApr 8, 2020

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The Wolverhampton Express and Star cleared its front page to hear the stories of NHS staff working at a hospital where a nurse died of Coronavirus.

A series of portrait images by Tim Thursfield of the Express and Star accompanied the article by investigations editor Richard Guttridge.

Nurse Areema Nasreen, based at Walsall Manor Hospital, died after contracting coronavirus.

NHS bosses at the hospital said the tragedy has strengthened the resolve of nurses and other staff to treat patients and minimise the impact of Covid-19.

The article included interviews with a hospital matron, support service supervisor, porter, consultant medical biologist, deputy director of pharmacy and critical care services lead.

Dr Aditya Kuravi, the critical care services lead, told the Express and Star they were unsure new ventilators would work in their hospital.

He said: “The whole arena has changed to a war footing. Essentially we are firefighting, caring for patients on an emergency basis, stabilising them very quickly and hoping for a turnaround. We are buying them time to recover.

“The frustration is the volume of the workload coming in. Normally we talk to families, update them and they have got time to grieve. Unfortunately now because of the volume of work and the speed at which things are changing it is very difficult for families to get to terms with it.”

He added: “We have tripled our bed capacity in intensive care and we have got contingency plans in place to expand into other areas.

“Essential procurement has supplied ventilators. These ones we are not used to on our wards. There is an element of training, an element of quality assuredness of the ventilators.

“Over the next one or two days we will know whether the ventilators are something we can use comfortably or whether we consider sending them back. This is a whole Black Country issue.”

Mr Kuravi said: “I don’t think the NHS was prepared at all.”

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