now on bbc news, panorama. news archive: the sound of coventry and warwickshire is bbc cwr. news archive: there has been a sharp ride in the number of deaths from covid 19 across the midlands. news archive: the government says the midlands is now a particular area of concern. news archive: the question remains - can the region weather the storm? the last few weeks have seen record numbers of deaths and the biggest challenge for the nhs in its 70—year history. have you ever seen anything like this before? absolutely not, absolutely not, there's nothing like this. panorama's been invited into university hospital coventry to see how the nhs is responding.

it's everywhere. everything you touch, everything you breathe. coronavirus infections appear to be levelling out. is there light at the end of the tunnel? we will probably, hopefully, never see anything like this again in our entire careers. it's fine. 0k. this is dr tom billyard, an intensive care consultant. 0h, isee. he's agreed to wear a body—mounted camera during one of his shifts. ok, let's go. i see you got your gopro on. oh, yes. the intensive care unit

usually has around 30 beds. because of coronavirus there are now almost 70. because covid—19 is a new disease, it's a steep learning curve for those on the front line trying to treat it. right, we are going to prone this chap. the team are here, so are you ready—ish? proning involves turning patients onto their fronts. it helps them breathe when the infection is deep in their lungs. ready, steady, go. we're suddenly seeing more and more patients that are benefiting from that. ready, steady, turn. turning patients prone face—down is a good thing to do. it makes them better, but it takes manpower to do it. you know, you need at least five people to turn a patient prone. it's physical. ready, steady, turn. it's because his shoulders haven't

rotated all the way. one, two, three, lift. looking good. one more, one more. we can do this. well, this is indeed the eye of the storm for this hospital and others up and down the country. this is intensive care and many of the patients here are very sick indeed, many on ventilators. they are under pressure here because more and more patients are arriving here every day. around one in ten people who test positive for covid—19 become severely unwell and are admitted to intensive care. recent research suggests only half of those patients might survive. we've had a death on here today already. it's been very difficult because obviously the family haven't been able to come in and see the patient, so i've had to do that over the phone, which is strange.

it's not what we normally do, so it's quite difficult, it's quite unpleasant. and difficult for the nursing staff also? absolutely, yes. for hospital staff, social distancing is not always possible. the coventry hospital is one of the busiest in the midlands, with 1,000 beds. at the daily strategy meeting, senior medical staff and management are updated on their covid patients and the fatalities to date. if we can hand over to darren to give us a current situation report to see where we are. today we have 349 positive patients, of which 136 of them remain in the hospital. we've had have 73 deceased patients, that was at eight o'clock this morning. medical chief professor kiran patel needs to know how much space they have.

how many side rooms do we have available at the moment for potential positive patients? at one o'clock there were two empty and nine potential. chief executive andy hardy believes the planning is paying off. we are feeling pressured, the pressure has been around for two or three weeks now. what we have done, because we know this is coming, we have been creating capacity for the expected surge and we are getting close to that now in a number of ways. the most important is increasing critical care capacity. we've prepared as well as we can. i do not want that to be famous last words but i'm, you know, i'm very confident in the preparation we have done. the most experienced medics are being drafted in to support intensive care, while some of the mostjunior are volunteering to help. some are fresh out of medical school. i think, on the one hand, i really welcome and inspire them and say this is the start of your journey. 0n the other hand i want

to be honest and say you are heading into the unknown a little bit, but we will look after you. so it's a mixture of emotions, isn't it? i want first of all to say thank you. you've all volunteered to help the nhs in a time of real need, and i'm quite touched by that. you are going to see some really difficult things, you're going to see some horrible things in some areas and you are going to see some fantastic teamwork in some areas. kiera doyle passed her final exams last month, but graduation is on hold because of the virus. to start here at the hospital i moved away from my family home to move up here on my own. and hearing about the risks we were going into and that we'd be exposed to things we'd never seen before, i was really worried and i wasn't 100% sure on what protection would be provided for us, but i think going into something like this, especially on the horizon of starting a newjob as well while this was all going on, was quite daunting.

before coronavirus there were two wards for respiratory diseases, now there are eight treating 230 patients who have or are suspected of having covid—i9. we've had to increase accommodate them in other wards. so you've had to expand basically because of the number? absolutely — all medical and surgical wards we have had to expand into. ever seen anything like this in your career? absolutely not, absolutely not, nothing like this we have ever come across. dr poonan puthran's patients are returning from intensive care, or have symptoms too severe to manage at home. many are elderly, like peter, who's been living in sheltered accommodation. hello, peter. we hope that once you are up and about as you normally would we should be

able to get you home. peter's getting better but the condition of others on the ward remains in the balance. just like her colleagues in intensive care, dr puthran is learning how to treat this new disease. there's a lot of studies coming from china, there's a lot of studies coming from italy, to tell us how severe the disease is going to be, but it's not been well defined. no definite treatment strategies as yet. there's a lot of people who are becoming extremely unwell but we can't differentiate who that is going to be. student doctor ciara is now on the covid wards, providing much—needed back—up for the hard pressed medical staff. we're doing more supportive roles, so things like bloods, writing up things for the patients. on my first day i again came in, saw the patients. it was all quite new to me and the next day when i came in a few of the patients had passed

away overnight, which isn't something that i've really had to deal with before. even experienced staff are having to adjust to the intense pressure. what's the most difficult thing that you and your nurses are coping with here on this covid ward? ijust think it's the sheer level of... of how unwell our patients are. it's just not what we're used to. the patients are so sick and it's really testing our nursing skills and our time management and our ability to actually get to them all quick enough. and what about the pressures on the nurses — the hours that are being worked, the shifts, going home to their families with the risks, of course? we're all worried when we come to work but we follow public health guidance, so we wear the ppe

that they ask us to wear and i do feel quite safe. but i think prolonged exposure and doing many days and doing extra days and doing overtime, you know, there's extra exposure that maybe we didn't need to have. the availability of ppe — personal protective equipment — has caused a political storm ever since this disease took hold. the first thing is we have a kite delivery of safety masks. we've got 8,500 of them delivered this morning. there are still concerns across the uk about supplies of ppe. in this hospital they say they have enough, for now. the roving teams are really happy with their own goggles, and they're happy with the decontamination. one of the groups decided to see whether it could go through the washer steriliser, and it did very successfully. but they have to manage supplies carefully. the stocks are lower, we are having to look at things in a different way. so we get daily deliveries and we have a covid store that we're keeping an eye on, so we're letting it come out. we're having to manage how it goes out. anxiety over ppe has been heightened because many health care workers across the uk

have contracted coronavirus. mark, hello. how are you feeling? one of them is here on the ward — paramedic mark anders. he spent a week at home trying to fight off the virus before his colleagues rushed him to hospital. when i was in a&e, i think because my temperature was so high, lots of things in my head going on, and they kept coming in and saying, "we can't get your temperature down, your blood pressure is too low," and next minute they said, "i think you are going to have to go to icu," and i think that was something... i was just fighting it from there on. you definitely didn't want to go to intensive care, did you? no. it's 50/50 whether you come out alive, isn't it? in the end mark didn't need intensive care. he can't be sure how he caught covid, but knows he was exposed

to the virus while doing his job. i suppose it shows the risks. yeah, you try and do everything by the book and just something catches you out and you get it. i don't think you realise then — it's everywhere, everything you touch, everything you breathe. ijust never had to deal with anything like this before. mark's wife is alone at home. kathy also had symptoms but is feeling better now. for mark it's hisjob, it's his life. he absolutely loves being a paramedic and i know that, and, you know, but i'm frightened for him, you know, i'm frightened for myself, for my family, you know. it's been the most awful, awful experience that i think we've ever experienced together.

it's just been horrendous. while the nhs is focused on heating coronavirus, there are many people with other conditions. this morning professor patel is operating on a patient with a heart condition. we have to make sure patients like this do have their pacemaker battery replaced, regardless of what is going on. across the nhs, non—urgent operations and clinics have been scaled back, postponed or cancelled. that's true for coventry, too. so from 32 theatres they've now gone to between five and seven a day operational, and that's because they want to create the capacity to treat patients who are suffering from coronavirus.

across the hospital, the risk of covid infection means everything takes longer. this sort of procedure normally would have probably taken 15/20 minutes, door in, door out. probably going to take us up to an hour in total today because of the preparation that we have had to make. this is a precaution because of covid? yes. where operations are being carried out, there's extra pressure on staff. it's not sustainable long—term. we are hoping as soon as this crisis is over we can go back to regular work and getting through the normal volumes of work. that could be quite a while? it could be. the latest mortality figures reveal that in england and wales in the first week of april there was a record number of deaths — 6,000 more than expected. 0nly around half of those deaths were attributed to covid. more people are likely to die from non—covid related illness over the next few months than covid. kiren patel worries that many

people may die from other, treatable diseases. we must continue to provide good health care for things like heart attacks, strokes, any bleeding disorders, etc, etc. so we still retain the ability to function with business as usual day by day in the intensive care unit very sick patients have to be in the intensive care unit very sick patients have to be monitored constantly. it's staff—intensive and normally there's one nurse dedicated to every bed. now, as in many hospitals, it's one to four beds. there's a wire not attached properly somewhere. nationally, covid patients in intensive care have an average age of 60, and around two thirds are men.

he wasn't really breathing enough by himself to manage, if there are problems we will have to sedate him a bit more. for dr billyard, there's no clear pattern to this disease. there are some patients that seem to get better early. and then have almost have a relapse and deteriorate again in a very unpredictable way. so, that can be... can be quite demoralising actually when you've seen people get better and then suddenly they get worse for no apparent reason. that's quite difficult to deal with. this is where it's so difficult for the staff to work. i mean, i've only been in here a short time in this equipment and i'm finding it really hard, really hot, and they are here for hours on end. how long can you actually work in this full gear, realistically? so, we've advised all our staff to be a maximum of two hours. and you have to go and get some hydration. they can just go and sit down, relax, just release some tension and have a drink or a chocolate and then go back and start all over again.

what's our next step with this chap? it's difficult, like the others, we are still learning what they do but if they are clearly deteriorating despite everything we do, then they are not going to get better. in intensive care, it's important that relatives remain involved and informed. but, now, because it's dangerous for them to visit, families are updated by phone. what you don't want to happen if she gets worse, it doesn't come as a big surprise, the family, so i should give her husband a call. hello, my name's dr billyard, i'm one of the intensive care consultants from coventry hospital. yes, so she's not doing dreadfully and this is not a bad news call, ijust wanted to make sure you were up to date. she...

she's still pretty sick, she's still in danger, but she's holding her own. we're used to communicating... we're used to communicating at the end of life but so much of that is non—verbal, picking up on body language cues and things. and you can't do any of that on the telephone. so, it makes those conversations really difficult. the worst day was when we had three deaths in our unit, which was way too much to bear for all of us. staff were emotionally breaking down and... we just didn't know what to do because we never had that much death in a day. working in intensive care, you see death a lot, but we're seeing more deaths than we normally would and that can... it can get you down.

so it's, it's not... i have to make a conscious effort not to take that burden home with me cos it's not fair on my family. but one thing we can assure everybody, nobody is allowed to die alone. we always sit there and hold their hands until everything happens. and with utmost dignity and respect to them. 0n the wards, they're working hard to make sure that patients don't feel isolated. emails sent from loved ones are delivered by nurses. and they're keeping patients' spirits up. the chaplain simon betteridge is often on the covid wards. i had one poignant moment last week. there'sa family... and they wrote a message to take to their gran expressing what the family felt about them and how valued she

was to their family. and i took that message to her on the night... just before she died, which was a great comfort for the family to know they'd been able to express that to their gran. good evening and welcome the chapel of university hospital coventry. in the hospital's multi—faith chapel, they‘ re having an easter service. but there's no congregation. instead, it's being live—streamed to the wards. how do you think things are going to go from here? i think it might get sadder. i think it will get more stressful. but i think what we're seeing is people coming together and... and finding creative ways of supporting each other which is really good. here in coventry, like the rest of the country, nhs staff have been crying out for increased coronavirus testing. the government promised 100,000 tests a day by the end of april. current capacity is

less than half that. lacey moore is being tested today. she's a receptionist at the hospital outpatients clinic. have you got shortness of breath? yeah. fever? yeah. the hospital's ramping up testing for its own staff. it's recently expanded capacity with a new laboratory. i do apologise, we do need to go quite far back. lacey's been off work, isolating at home, not knowing whether she's positive for the virus. like thousands of nhs staff across the country. you're free to leave now. just wait for a call from virology. so, lacey, how important is it for you as a health worker to get this test? it's great because if it is negative, possibly i can go back to work if i'm feeling 0k. cos we are short—staffed at the moment because we had three members of staff off.

so it's a lot of short staff at the moment so we're struggling. so we are now starting to test a lot more staff. i think over the last week we're going to have the ability for patients and staff to go from 150 tests a day where of course patients come first. now we're up to 400 and that's getting even bigger. we've had new equipment delivered so we're going to move towards 24/7 testing. surely, the testing was too little too late? well, of course you could have... it would have been better if it was earlier. we are still seeing high levels of staff absences because of sickness, because of covid issues and non—covid issues and the isolation. paramedic mark anders has now been in hospital for eight days. hello, babe, you all right? how you doing? yeah. what did doctor say? oh, that's brilliant, that's absolutely brilliant.

glad to be going home. so i'm just reading my discharge note. at one point, i didn't think i was going to get home, so, fortunately, it turned out all right. hopefully, i am one of the lucky ones. i think we just have to write off 2020 as a bad year. like the vast majority of people who catch coronavirus, mark has recovered. it's amazing, it's amazing. the best thing ever. it's just absolutely amazing that, all right. the hospital relies on hundreds of support workers — cleaners, porters and catering staff

— to help look after patients. the chief exec is keeping up morale by handing out easter eggs donated by the public. we are just taking it round particularly to ward areas that are absolutely front line. and it's little things like this that makes a big difference — make these people feel appreciated. so, we've had the easter weekend, that was the weekend when we were anticipating a surge. that surge does not appear to have come. it hasn't come here in coventry and indeed across the country. we see that, those figures and we mirror that. so, yes, we are seeing a plateauing at the moment. but, of course, we don't know whether there's a surge still to come.

are we going to get a secondary surge as the lockdown is relaxed, as we see measures to bring society back to some kind of normality? but that normality is likely to be a long way off. the covid wards are still busy. ciara's career as a doctor has started in a way she never would have expected. i was really worried about what this would be like and that we'd be thrown in at the deep end and it was a bit of a baptism of fire. we will probably, hopefully, never see anything like this again in ourentire careers. while i was in the hospital there was news that someone in this close—knit community had succumbed to the virus. lei dayrit, a nurse at st cross hospital, rugby, part of this nhs trust. she had asthma and died at home a week after showing symptoms of covid. adrian was herfriend and colleague. i could proudly say that she was the epitome of what a great nurse should be. being selfless, being dedicated,

her loyalty is commendable, you know, she had worked in this trust for 16 years. she was definitely an unsung hero. so she was working despite the known risks of this? unfortunately, with her background of having an asthma, that puts her to the vulnerability. and, unfortunately, she deteriorated and it was a massive shock to all of us that have known her cos you wouldn't think of somebody that you love would be affected by this pandemic we are currently in. lei dayrit is one of close to 50 nhs workers who've died with coronavirus. it's obviously a massive blow to the hospital, to her teams and to her family.

as we move towards this thursday and clap for carers we specifically here, we're going to be thinking about lei, what she did. she was a really popular member of staff. at the hospital they're gathering for what's become a weekly ritual, here and across the uk. the thursday night clap—out for nhs workers and carers. we work in itu theatres and lots of people in there wish they could come out and see this now. so i'm gonna come and take a video for everyone inside and show them the support we've had. what does it mean to you if you work here? just very emotional. it's very nice to see the appreciation. 0n the streets of coventry, they've also come out to show their support. we came out to clapjust we wanted to be a community, to show like the people next door who's a nurse, how much they mean to us what they are doing.

you can't fault them. they're absolutely fantastic, putting their lives at risk for all of us. absolutely brilliant. it's quite touching, isn't it? and i think itjust epitomises the public support the nhs has. i think it's brilliant, a great show of affection. since the crisis began, more than 600 covid patients have been treated here. and more than 160 have died. so far, this hospital, like the rest of the nhs, has coped. but the challenge is far from over.

this is bbc news. welcome if you're watching here in the uk, on pbs in america or around the globe. i'm lewis vaughan jones. our top stories: a scientific landmark: two uk volunteers are injected as the first vaccine trials for coronavirus in europe get underway. american lawmakers pass another relief bill worth $1180 billion for small businesses and overwhelmed hospitals. violence in venezuela as people break the strict quarantine to protest against food and petrol shortages. and smart or stupid? why sweden is bucking the trend for lockdowns.