Now on bbc news, britain has one of the highest death toll from covid 19 in the world. This film follows staff at the Royal Hospital in london as they try to cope with a second way. And a warning, this programme contains content which some of may find it distressing. Shes young. Shes someone s relative. This is something precious that were holding and were trying to do. My wife lost her fight for life. Nobody wants to go through this. I wouldnt wish this on anybody. The coronavirus pandemic has hit the United Kingdom hard. I think the public want to do the right thing, but i dont feel they understand fully the scale of the problem. This is the story of one of the hospitals in the eye of the storm. So were now going to run into a problem because we havent got any beds. Weve got patients on 12 floors in total. Weve returned to the royal london, to witness for ten days the full force of the second wave of covid 19. Staff are tired, and then we have to ask them to do more and more and more
Now on bbc news, britain has one of the highest death tolls from covid 19 in the world. Clive myrie s film follows staff at the Royal London Hospital as they try to cope with a second wave. A warning this programme contains content which some viewers may find distressing. Shes young. Shes someone s relative. This is something precious that were holding and were trying to do. My wife lost her fight for life. Nobody wants to go through this. I wouldnt wish this on anybody. The coronavirus pandemic has hit the United Kingdom hard. I think the public want to do the right thing, but i dont feel they understand fully the scale of the problem. This is the story of one of the hospitals in the eye of the storm. So were now going to run into a problem because we havent got any beds. Weve got patients on 12 floors in total. Weve returned to the royal london, to witness for ten days the full force of the second wave of covid 19. Staff are tired, and then we have to ask them to do more and more and
movement for women s rights. we do want to start with the president and covid as well. tomorrow president joe biden and vice president kamala harris and their spouses are going to start a whirlwind tour fanning out across battleground states to promote and explain the coronavirus relief package. with that i want to go to monica alba who s in wilmington, delaware, for us standing by with all this information. monica, good to see you this afternoon. talk us through some of the first stops of the president and the vice president and what we re expecting from them. reporter: well, this is really where you re going to see the policies start to intersect with the politics. you re going to see the president, the vice president, their spouses, cabinet officials, really fanning out all across the country from nevada and colorado to states like pennsylvania and elsewhere to tout what s in the covid relief package. everybody has seen the headlines at this point and the white house fee
ingoong right now. reporter: an insatiable deman for tests has driven up the eye-popping numbers. log jams have crescendoed during the holidays in miami on christmas day the flow in and out of this vaccination site is being monitored by police with lines of cars spill out on to the main road going down several miles until finally ending here all of these people desperate for a test what time this morning did you get here 8:00 in the morning. just to make sure i don t have anything to give my family. reporter: a sobering indication this latest wave is not just a milder version of past surges this is the penn state icu a year after the arrival of vaccines. right now it s very stressful. the hospitals are full a lot of the very sick ones are the unvaccinated population reporter: at umass memorial there are 14 beds in the icu, 12 of them covid patients, some of whom require proning. takes six or seven of us nurses and
turning or proning a critically ill patient can help them breathe. it requires many highly trained experts. these seven covid patients all require intensive care. one is in her early 20s. non vaccinated. only one of the patients has been doubly vaccinated. the rest are unvaccinated. physios attempting to remove secretion from a covid patient s lungs. this time, it doesn t work. the care is 24/7. it s all consuming. it s a tense environment, but respect and dignity are paramount. these are the faces behind the covid figures we report every day. critically ill men and women. some are conscious of what s happening around them, many aren t. and one to one nursing care, the gold standard for icu, is no longer possible here as staffing has been depleted. the demand s insatiable.