Video shows real situation in Sydney

The video, The Hardest of Times, was posted on Liverpool Hospital’s Facebook page, showing staff helping weak patients as they struggle to sit up, stand and walk.

Doctors and nurses clad in multiple layers of PPE and face masks shared the toll of their work on the Covid front line and how they held patients’ hands as they fought to breathe.

“The worst day’s every day,” respiratory ward nurse unit manager Jenny Wallace said in the video.

“Every day you’re actually assisting patients that are struggling to breathe, that are away from their families and their loved ones and (are) only there with the nurses and the doctors to support them through what is a very difficult time for them.”

Respiratory staff specialist Jonathan Williamson helped look after patients who had died.

“With dying patients, we like to be in there and hold their hands and talk to them and have their families with them,” Dr Williamson said.

“Often I’m holding a telephone while they’re speaking their last words to their family.”

Dr Williamson said the hospital had responded like he had never seen in his 10 years of working there.

“Every single department is in top gear, everyone’s working together, everybody really is just putting 100 per cent in,” he said.
“The best days are when the patients from intensive care come out back to the ward, we rehabilitate them and get them to go home. They’re delighted. They are so grateful for the care that they’ve received.”

But he said the difference between patients who had been vaccinated and those who had not was like “chalk and cheese”.

“They just don’t get as sick,” he said.

“Get yourself vaccinated and listen to the public health advice.”

Ms Wallace also urged people to get the jab to protect themselves and their loved ones.

“Therefore they don’t have to join us here on these terrible difficult days that we have,” she said.