Wishing the Prime Minister a full and speedy recovery

It is difficult seeing the Prime Minister being hospitalised. For all the partisan politics in the NHS, most people I am talking too are shocked. Everyone respects the office, no matter their thoughts of the man. For the Government, it has now got intensely personal. I hope this does not distort decision making.

In hindsight, the officials could probably have handled the communications of this better. We were initially told he was being hospitalised only because of persistent symptoms and to do some tests. Most casualty departments will have seen similar patients – the disease certainly goes on longer than anyone would like. Persistent symptoms are not a reason for admission in and of themselves. Our priority is to identify those with any evidence of COVID pneumonia. These are the patients most at risk of requiring respiratory support.

Identifying patients at risk is a mix of clinical observation including respiratory rate and the saturation of oxygen in the blood along with imaging. Chest X-rays are the mainstay but they can miss the subtle disease. CT scans are the most sensitive but hard to obtain. Ultrasound in A&E is readily available and very sensitive.

We didn’t have have any inside information. But there was more than a bit of suspicion that the Prime Minister’s admission was not simply a precaution due to persistent symptoms. There wasn’t any surprise when the truth came out. It is still interesting watching the contortions of language as officials try to avoid telling plain truths. They want to avoid talking about potentially significant interventions like CPAP respiratory support – which seems to have the shortest odds in the workplace sweepstake.

To the credit of all involved, the Prime Minister is in the same healthcare facility as any other citizen and does not seem to be given any grossly different medical treatment – albeit we could speculate that there are some fairly advanced security procedures.

One thing that does make a few doctors chuckle is the idea he is being treated by the UK’s top respiratory doctor. Whilst I am sure this doctor is a fantastic physician, medicine is not like tennis - there are no world rankings. So quite how it was decided he was the top would be interesting.

Signing off for now and wishing the Prime Minister a full and speedy recovery.