Write an essay on how COVID19 affected UK.

Write an essay on how COVID19 affected UK. The UK has a population of 66 million people. The UK comprises 4 countries (England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales). The health care system is based on the National Health Service(NHS) which was started in 1948. This is a single-payer system, considered by the US to be “socialized medicine”due to government involvement. The government employs most doctors and owns the hospitals in the UK. The NHS was founded on 3 principles : to meet the needs of everyone, to be free at the point of delivery and the ability to pay should not be the focus. The NHS provides universal health care coverage to all citizens. It is funded by taxes and income linked payroll deductions. Wait times and staff shortages are an issue but overall, costs for individuals are low. Most people in the UK are satisfied with the NHS. Early Response to Covid-19 Pandemic The Covid-19 pandemic swept across Asia from December 2019 to February 2020. In these early days, the UK had a 4 pronged scientifically backed plan to contain, delay, research and mitigate the pandemic. The 1st confirmed case of Covid-19 in the UK was on January 31st 2020. The 1st death from Covid-19 was on March 5th 2020. Yet, in early March 2020, as the virus spread through the UK, the government rejected the idea of a lockdown as they feared public outrage. Borders and airports remained open. W.H.O recommendations of find, test, treat and isolate were ignored. The focus at the time was misplaced and included testing hospital patients and transferring elderly patients from hospitals to nursing homes without testing. The Chairman of Uk Scientific Advisory for Emergencies, who was the chief scientific advisor to the government, Patrick Vallance, “wanted to build up herd immunity” based on the erroneous notion at the time that most infections would be mild like influenza. He wanted 60-70% of the population to be infected and become immune to Covid-19, so that viral spread would be unlikely. For a deadly virus like Covid-19, W.H.O recommends herd immunity through vaccination not natural infection. As the number of deaths rose, this thinking was swiftly dismissed. Politicians and scientists frequently disagreed on a number of issues leading to the absence of a unified response. As the situation continued to worsen with the daily number of cases and deaths increasing at an alarming rate, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced an official lockdown on March 23, 2020 but by then 2 months of preparation and prevention time had been lost. Healthcare workers had insufficient PPE and by April 22nd 2020, 119 NHS staff had died from the virus. Just 2 months after the first Covid-19 death, on May 7th 2020, 30 000 people in the UK had died from Covid-19. Drushanie – Accessibility (Staff Shortages and Attempts to Increase Accessibility) Although the NHS is the largest employer in the UK, employing 1.5 million people, it still falls short in the amount of trained doctors for the population. As we can see on the graph to the left, there are only 2.8 trained doctors per 1,000 people in the population, falling well below most OECD countries. Pre-covid, nurses and doctors were leaving the UK to work elsewhere, citing concerns about their wellbeing. They were also frustrated and felt disempowered in the face of increasing patient demand that led to compromised access to care and quality. These staff shortages only worsened during Covid. As mentioned before, the NHS suffered through a lack of PPE. Medical workers were falling sick at a high rate and staff was depleted even more. [next slide] There was also a shortage regarding testing. The demand for tests was 3-4x higher than the total daily capacity. The spike in demand, due to children returning to school, people returning from vacation, people returning to work, and normal rhinoviruses/flu, was too much for the laboratories to keep up with. People were often told there were no more remaining tests or that they had to travel hundreds of kilometers to get a test. In response, people turned to emergency departments, adding to the already overwhelmed healthcare system. [next slide] To combat this, the NHS took numerous actions. To increase staff, the NHS set thousands of medical students to graduate early in April 2020 to begin working as junior doctors. They also called upon doctors and other medical providers who retired within the last 3 years to consider returning to work and those in education, research, or inspection were also encouraged to return to their clinical duties. Ultimately, more than 500 GPs returned to help with COVID-19 patients who did not need immediate referrals, but needed further assessment and follow-up. Another issue of accessibility arose in the inadequate amount of hospital beds in the UK. Before Covid-19, many hospitals closed due to a heavier focus on outpatient care. This led to high occupancy rates in remaining hospitals, at about 85% even prior to the pandemic. This caused hospitals to quickly become overwhelmed by the pandemic. To increase medical beds and critical-care capacity, the NHS reorganized and reassessed clinical/non-clinical departments to areas of greater need providing extra training as needed. They also enacted a mass reallocation of hospital beds, cancelling non-urgent elective work, repurposing operating theaters, and commissioning private facilities. Additionally, thousands of patients were discharged to free up beds, planned treatments were postponed, and appointments were shifted online where possible. Next, taneisha will be presenting on the cost of healthcare on the economy and residents. Taneisha- Cost of healthcare FIRST IMAGE Economically, covid-19 has been the largest hit to the UK in 300 years. The pandemic which resulted in a lockdown and strict procedures related to social gatherings were measures executed by the government and it has led to a huge economic deflation in the UK. Estimates vary, but forecasts predict that output in the UK will be at least 10% lower in real terms in 2020 than in 2019. The UK’s official forecaster suggests outputs will fall by 13.3% over the financial year 2020/21. As seen in the figure pictured, a fall in output of this magnitude is larger than anything experienced in the UK since the Great Frost in 1709. NEXT IMAGE With the impact of the pandemic, the government’s decision to support businesses and households meant that estimately,the covid-19 borrowing absorbed nearly two thirds (64.5%) of the hit to the private sector. Reduced output has also hit tax revenues and led to higher welfare spending, pushing the planned borrowing up to 125bn. Government departments are expected to spend 19% approximately 76.3bn more than their allocated budgets to meet the demands of the corona virus response. The day to day running of the central government departments is 600m more than planned. Even though the information provided is for the 2020/21 fiscal year, there is considerable uncertainty about the long term economic effects caused by the pandemic. There are no individual costs related to COVID-19 testing. Individuals are able to get tested twice a week depending on their situations and or exposure. Vaccine admissions are also free and open to all citizens of the UK, with those most vulnerable being able to get it first. Next Karina will speak on Quality Karina- Quality National authorities, medical societies, and academic scholars set out to issue guidelines advising on the management of COVID-19 patients and the re-configuration of hospitals to minimize the risk of transmissions While the guidelines were regularly updated, and sometimes conflicting, little room was provided for staff to integrate, interpret, and translate the information into actionable operational processes that were both feasible and comprehensive for staff and patients. GP appointments fell in March, and again in April, by about 30% with the proportion of consultations carried out face-to-face falling from 70% before COVID-19 to 23% during the pandemic By early April, concerns were raised about significant drops in Accident and Emergency (A&E) use, and admissions for urgent conditions via hospital emergency departments. This was caused by a combination of reductions in injuries during lockdown, but also the unwillingness of the public to use emergency services when infection rates were high. In addition, there have been fewer cancer referrals and an increase in cancellations of planned treatment for people with long term conditions To tackle such decline, information campaigns were launched by NHS England to encourage patients to use the NHS for urgent conditions, such as stroke and heart attacks Beginning in March, changes to primary care were mandated, with the introduction of digital triage, the rapid expansion of remote consultation, and the creation of ‘hot hubs’ to manage potentially infectious patients across GP practices At the same time, the public were given instructions to access NHS 111 (a 24/7 telephone and online service that gives urgent health advice) rather than their GP, if they had COVID-19 symptoms To limit exposure to aerosols, workflows inside and outside surgical suites needed to be re-designed Taking on and taking off extensive amounts of PPE not only extended pre- and post-surgical phases, but even required the exchange of surgical teams for procedures exceeding several hours. Another contributing factor was the required time for air-cleaning activities in between surgical cases, especially after aerosol-generating procedures. As a result, compared to pre-COVID-19 rates, fewer patients could receive surgical treatment Next Drushanie will speak on equity Equity – Drushanie As we can see, the impact of the pandemic on the United Kingdom’s economy, health system, and population has been profound. Due to socio-cultural and economic inequalities, though, the minority ethnic communities in the UK have been more severely impacted. In the United Kingdom, the racial disparity of the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic was highlighted by the fact that the first 11 doctors and physicians who succumbed to the virus were from minority communities.

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