UK COVID-19 strain: Aussie paramedic working in London warns of out of control virus
A young paramedic working in London has warned against Australians becoming complacent about the new highly infectious UK strain. WATCH THE VIDEO
Tasmania
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CATHRYN Jones has just finished her 12-hour shift as an ambulance paramedic working in London. She is completely spent. Every call out for the day has been a COVID-positive patient.
Suffering is everywhere, death is common, PPE is the uniform and ambulance ramping is a fact of life.
“It is exhausting. I go to work, come home, eat some food and basically just sleep. There’s not much time for anything else at the moment,” she says.
The Hobart-raised 25-year-old says this is what her life is like right now and lockdown means there are few options to socialise anyway.
Miss Jones is one of many Australian paramedics working for the London Ambulance Service — 35 per cent of the workforce are now Aussies.
She is at the frontline and has seen an explosion in COVID cases with the onset of winter. It’s dangerous and confronting work.
Coronavirus has swamped the UK capital since the beginning of December.
The country’s death toll has climbed above 80,000 and new case numbers are about 50,000 a day. Paramedics are among the dead.
“Quite a few of my workmates have caught COVID. Unfortunately we have had a few colleagues pass away as well,” Miss Jones said.
“Thankfully I’ve remained well over the entire time and haven’t had COVID and have had my first dose of the vaccination.
“It’s been exceptionally busy over here in London, where we have a very high death rate. Almost every patient I go to has COVID unfortunately.
“It’s pretty non-stop. I worked a shift today and every single patient I went to was COVID-positive — that’s been pretty consistent for the past couple of weeks.”
Miss Jones says ambulance ramping is an everyday event as the health system is overwhelmed.
Since the start of December it has been common to wait 3-5 hours in an ambulance waiting for a cubicle in the emergency department to become available.
Personal Protection Equipment has become the paramedic’s uniform. This involves masks, goggles and Tyvek (disposable coverall) suits.
“They make us look a bit like painters,” Miss Jones says.
“You have to take off all your PPE to have a drink of water or cup of coffee and then replace
it all. It is quite wearing but we’re used to it — it’s the new normal now.”
Miss Jones set off for London after graduating from the University of Tasmania in 2017.
“There weren’t many jobs going in Ambulance Tasmania so I knew I would have to move somewhere and when I heard London was hiring, I couldn’t resist,” she said.
“I’ve always wanted to see a bit more of the world and London seemed like a good place to get experience as a paramedic.”
The former St Michael’s Collegiate student said London has been an amazing experience and she had been able to travel throughout Europe before COVID hit.
She is now studying her masters in Advanced Paramedic Practice part time while working full time as a paramedic and so will remain in the UK for at least a couple more years.
She says her job can be confronting but the close-knit ambulance service looks after its own.
“Obviously like with anything it can go not the way you’d hope. Despite doing everything we can, there are obviously some patients you can’t help as much as we’d like.
“Sometimes you do take that home. Luckily we are quite good at talking to each other and we do have mental health support if we need it.
“We are all taking it day-by-day to try and get through and remember that no matter what we go to it’s not my tragedy. It’s not my family and not my friends.”
Despite the challenges, Miss Jones still looks forward to going to work. The roster means she works three or four 12-hour shifts followed by two days off.
“You know what, despite it all I do love my job I genuinely find it the most rewarding one that I could be doing,” she said.
But sometimes it can be difficult. Like the case a couple of months ago where she attended a patient in a care home which was locked down with no family or visitors.
“This patient was unfortunately end-of-life palliative care and was going to die in the next couple of hours and his family couldn’t visit. The patient was COVID positive. The only thing we could do was to get out our work iPads and Facetime this patient’s family so they could say goodbye over video.
“There have been quite a few instances like that. It’s always really difficult to witness.”
Miss Jones says she is thankful her family and friends are relatively safe back in Tasmania but she warns against complacency.
For those who are reluctant to take the virus risk seriously she has a message: “All I say to them is just see the news that is coming out of the UK and they won’t want to be quite as complacent. I know how rapidly a situation can change. All it takes is for one person coming in and not quarantine properly for this virus — especially this mutated version of the virus — to spread rapidly and unfortunately Australia would be in the same situation as the UK.”
The hope for Miss Jones and her colleagues is the vaccine roll out.
“Most of us are just trying to get through the winter and hoping that once everyone’s been vaccinated we are going to see a lot more improvement over here and be under less pressure.
“Hopefully by the time spring rolls around life is getting a little bit back to normal here and we can finally say we’ve got the virus under control.
“And at some point I’d like to travel back to Tasmania to see all my family.”
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