Why is govt policy not to give us all early enough treatment?

[Lumene]

“Early clinical management of symptoms, to which Boris Johnson had access, means that outcomes are generally better, but that requires testing at an early stage of the disease.”

amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/22/flattening-curve-new-zealand-coronavirus?__twitter_impression=true

Right well those phone calls are clearly working...

You can’t really argue with a 33% hospital death rate versus other countries who have a lower death rate and get people in earlier.

The Covid team Doctors are calling people daily at home to monitor severity of symptoms, there is a number to call if you get worse that bypasses 111 and obviously 999 if urgent.

This sounds great, how do you access it? I have had two close friends really ill but no access to anything like this. There have been a few posters on here with similar challenges. It doesn’t seem to have been publicised at all?

Well the NHS is a bit crap so there’s that element. If they treated everyone properly the system would collapse in a week. That’s why they haven’t been delivering adequate healthcare for years, but unreasonable to expect that to suddenly change in the peak of an epidemic.

The Covid team hasn't been in operation from the outset. I have a friend (not local so don't even know if these teams are nationwide) but she's now on day 30. After 10 days she contacted 111 and her GP as she was worsening. Her lips weren't blue so she was told to stay at home and prescribed antibiotics in case of secondary infection.

Only last Thursday when she was still very unwell was she finally referred to the Covid team and given an oxygen monitor to use at home and had daily phone call.

Boris is on TV at the moment claiming at no point was the NHS overwhelmed and no one was denied an ITU bed or ventilator who needed it - that's clearly untrue because people have been refused admission to hospital and have died at home so they didn't get ITU care when they needed it did they?

If we fill the hospitals with Covid patients the same amount of people would die in hospital,maybe more but the percentage would go down.Comparing percentages across countries is meaningless unless you know how ill the patients are before hand.
If you fill the hospitals full of Covid patients then all the cancer treatment,emergency surgery would stop.

What everyone needs to remember too is that this death rate is the result of a country on lockdown and an NHS closed to all but emergency cases. It clearly would have been overwhelmed had we not locked down and the NHS had been expected to provide normal service.

That will be the challenge after this lockdown. Can the NHS cope with providing normal healthcare plus us all going to work and school? I very much doubt it.

Interesting that Boris just said the reason we need to stop a second wave is to protect the NHS. Surely the first thought should be we need to prevent a second wave to save lives!

Because the government is following the science.

Sorry, I mean following the science as translated/filtered through a SPAD who only 2 months ago was caught employing a know eugenicest, and who is only in post because he helped lie and cheat the present incompetent government to power via a fraudulent referendum.

So, yeah...

DH had a Covid team Doctor call on Sunday, 10 minutes after calling 111, they were calling from North Shields and this morning he was told he’d been passed to the West Midlands team, which is more local for us.
I think they’ve taken more of an interest in him due to cardiac problems last year - initially thought to be a heart attack but after speaking to his GP this morning, on the insistence of the fantastic covid team Doctor, it seems he actually had Myocarditis! Seems like he’s slipped through the Consultant’s net 🙄 So one good thing from this is that he should be back in the system.

Interesting that Boris just said the reason we need to stop a second wave is to protect the NHS. Surely the first thought should be we need to prevent a second wave to save lives!

Absolutely this! And I can't fathom why more people aren't thinking it. So many people have just willingly accepted having the highest number deaths in Europe because it''s the NHS we're protecting - not people.

^^ Yep. There was some shouting at the TV in our house when we heard this.

It's not just Germany.

Look at Turkey. Low death rate because of early treatment.

While we are sat home saving the NHS.

I am convinced that the policy is to limit access to hospital in order to demonstrate that the NHS hasn't been overwhelmed which = success. The nightingales were created as a bit of a PR stunt again to show we have not been overwhelmed while at the same time wards were emptied and capacity increased at normal hospitals, which is really why the NHS haven't been overwhelmed. Meanwhile people are at home ill feeling like they shouldn't even ring 111 so as not to be a burden, and NHS workers made into superhuman heroes that we applaud for their bravery and we protect them by not being a burden. It's all a very well crafted series of messages from the government. I have had contact with 111 and my GP twice now over a five week period of symptoms and told unless I am panting for breath and can't get out of bed I shouldn't worry, it is like many other viruses so I should use my common sense and be pragmatic. Even if I were struggling for breath the first step would be antibiotics to see if there is a secondary infection. I think it's a disgrace that this is the reality and then the government stands there saying everyone who has needed hospital treatment is getting it, and therefore it has been a success

I recently saw a Mumsnetter describe things very aptly - "The NHS is wonderful, but you must never ever use it!"

I think it is worrying, I think gps and 111 are relying too heavily on the 'can you speak' at all rather than other clinical indicators which cant be assessed over the phone. I'm 8 weeks into covid recovery, I have a home oximeter as have quite bad asthma, I felt really unwell my pulse was high my O2 was 92 or thereabouts for 5 days and I was told to call back if it stayed constantly in the 80s which is understandable to a point, but I also was struggling to get to the toilet and just felt like death, was really faint etc etc..now obviously I'm now recovering so it's fine, but I feel like there must be people who were in my position where it went the other way and they deteriorated fast and missed out on treatment at the right time, maybe other people would be more assertive than me, but I had the fear about wasting nhs resources.

How can we find out the journalists who are attending the next briefing? Have been searching but hard to find, is it worth just tweeting Guardian journalists who are doing Coronavirus coverage?

This worries me so much.

This terrifies me. It's like if I'm able to give my address to the call handler then I'm not unwell enough to qualify for the ambulance. As someone who lives with no other adults this really really worries me.

The press should have been on this a few weeks ago, instead of the ‘when does lockdown finish’ that they’ve been obsessing over. It’s been staring them all in the face!

The press are making me really angry. They aren't asking the right questions and let ministers off the hook when they give non answers.

Why are our death rates so high?
How can they claim that everyone who needed ITU care received it, when so many people haven't even been admitted to hospital or have died on main wards because they deteriorated too quickly.
How have we allowed care homes to become death camps?
How is it safe for PPE to not be charged between patients, when prior to COVID that would have been s major breach of infection control protocol?
Why aren't ministers acknowledging that the NHS has only not been overwhelmed because all other services have been stopped? How do they plan to resume service given that this virus will be here for a very long time?

@Bellendejour I think guardian would be a good bet, on their live reporting I'm sure the journalists say contact them with comments

Does anyone know if UK policy has changed yet regarding earlier medical intervention?

Yet another thread whipping up a frenzy.

People are simply not presenting at A&E, not phoning 999 /111 for help and advice soon enough. A&E staff can hardly go cold calling door to door checking temperatures and oxygen concentrations.

It is not an uncommon situation that people present late in the disease process - sad but true. Just think back to last week when headlines were expressing concern that numbers of people attending A&E with heart attacks and strokes was suspiciously low.

Attendances at our local A&E 'COVID' side have gone down, there's capacity in ICU.

I was wondering this the other day. How is our death rate so high when some of our hospitals are half empty and coping fine?

If we fill the hospitals with Covid patients the same amount of people would die in hospital

That's not true. I was in hospital for 4/5 days and am now making a good recovery. I was told by the doctor that if it had gone another 12-24 hours without me being admitted I would have died.

As with just about every other known disease or illness, the earlier the patient can get medical treatment the better the outcome is likely to be for them. Filling hospitals with covid patients would result in far less virus-related deaths as long as they get them in there early enough instead of waiting until their lips are blue.

Of course the proportion of those admitted to hospital is lower when the bar for admission is higher, simply because many of those who are admitted in such countries would have never met the bar for admission in this country, but that doesn't mean that we are causing unnecessary deaths by holding the bar higher.
The data shows that very few people are dying at home (care homes are a different matter and in the majority of cases the people dying in such an environment would have died anyway) suggesting that those who need hospital treatment are on the most part getting it (but unlike in some other countries those who don't are not). Unfortunately the evidence shows that even with the best possible use of PPE (which would have to be stretched even thinner if more people were in hospital) that there remains a not insignificant risk of transmission of the virus to hospital workers, who will then pass the virus on further. This means that while a lower bar for hospital admission may well reduce the rate of death it wouldn't necessarily reduce the numbers of deaths due to it causing more people to be infected.