An intensive care doctor has reported the tragic death of a young man who lost his battle with Covid-19.
Dr Richard Cree and the rest of the intensive care team at the hospital had treated the young man who was very unwell with what was believed to be the Delta variant of the virus.
However the doctor, who is employed at James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough, confirmed on January 12 that the patient had sadly passed away, as reported by Teesside Live.
He said: "It saddens me to report that our young Covid patient did not survive.
"The improvement that we had seen turned out to be short-lived and, despite our best efforts, his condition began to worsen. His death has upset all of us who looked after him and our thoughts are with his family."
Dr Richard Cree confirmed the news in the latest edition of his blog, nomoresurgeons.com.
He has been keeping a blog since the start of the pandemic, detailing just what life is like on the frontline for the ICU team at Teesside's largest hospital.
There are currently 142 Covid cases being treated by South Tees Hospital Trust with seven in James Cook Hospital's critical care unit and three of those are ventilated.
There are also 50 non-Covid cases on the ward with 24 of those patients being ventilated.
At the weekend, the UK became the first country in Europe to record over 150,000 Covid deaths.
"It’s difficult to visualise what a crowd of people that big looks like, but there’s no doubt that it’s an awful lot of people," said Dr Cree in his blog.
"Every one of these deaths will have left a grieving family in its wake and the cumulative burden of all this suffering is hard to comprehend."
Dr Cree said there is now "no doubt" that the Omicron variant is less severe than its predecessors.
"In many respects, this fourth wave feels like it is due to a different virus," he said.
"Most of the patients who have required admission to the Covid Intensive Care Unit are relatively young and unvaccinated.
"The few vaccinated patients that we are admitting have either not received a booster dose or have significant existing medical problems that cause them to be immuno-suppressed.
"As a result, the number of patients within our Covid Intensive Care has remained relatively low, despite a significant increase in the total number of covid patients in the hospital.
"Across the country, the picture is similar and the overall number of Covid patients on ventilators is slowly decreasing.
"Many of the positive patients on the wards have presented to hospital with problems unrelated to their infection."
Dr Cree said staff sickness rates have fallen but the numbers off work due to Covid remains "significant".
He said many of the team have had to work extra shifts to cover colleagues who have tested positive and he said he was "surprised" by how many of the team have been infected with Omicron.
"Many ICU doctors and nurses will have caught the original strain back in the spring of 2020 and we have all received three doses of the Pfizer vaccine since then," he explained.
"Despite wearing PPE all the time, most of us will have been topping up our antibody levels every now and then as a result of inadvertent exposure. There can’t be many people with better immunity, surely?
"Whilst no-one has been anything other than mildly unwell, the fact that so many of us have been infected is a testament to Omicron’s remarkable transmissibility, even in a highly-immune population."
Dr Cree said the Middlesbrough hospital remains under significant pressure but A&E has gone from being " bonkers-busy" to "just stupid-busy".
There are four Covid wards at the hospital, he said, and he admitted it is proving difficult to find a bed for non-Covid patients.
More positively, Dr Cree said the number of people being admitted to hospital with Covid hasn’t risen as high as he had feared it might and said admissions "may even be starting to plateau".
"I will admit that I thought things would be worse by now but I’m all too happy to be proved wrong," he said.
"We still have a busy time ahead of us but it’s looking increasingly likely that we will be able to ‘ride out’ the Omicron wave after all."
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