‘A slow and botched response’: My eight weeks on the Covid-19 frontline have taught me how the NHS made this crisis worse

By Malcolm Kendrick, doctor and author who works as a GP in the National Health Service in England. His blog can be read here and his book, 'Doctoring Data – How to Sort Out Medical Advice from Medical Nonsense,' is available here.

No PPE, no tests, no support. I work as a GP in care homes and a hospital setting, and watched in horror over the past few weeks as the approach we took to tackling the virus caused my elderly patients to die.

As with most people, Covid-19 seemed a long way away to me in January. I was working as a GP in out-of-hours cover, and in Intermediate Care. This means rehabilitating elderly people following accidents or illness, who need support and medical attention before going home.

All was calm at the start of the year. Yes, China was going into lockdown, a few people had become trapped on cruise liners, posting interminable online videos. Would Covid come here, to the UK? The NHS was untroubled, slumbering.

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