The ECHO’s Liam Thorp reflects on a harrowing visit to the Royal Liverpool Hospital at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic
The ECHO’s Liam Thorp reflects on a harrowing visit to the Royal Liverpool Hospital at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic
As a journalist of some years, there are a number of stories that have lingered long in my memory. What I witnessed in the Intensive Care Unit of the Royal Liverpool Hospital at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic is certainly one of them.
After months of negotiations, I was granted exclusive access to the ICU at the city centre hospital in November of 2020. The virus had been with us here in Liverpool for many months but it was still raging and many people in this unit were still dying horrible deaths.
The trust running the hospital agreed to let myself and photographer Andy Teebay inside in order to highlight to people just how serious the situation still was at this point. Understandably the fatigue of multiple lockdowns and a convoluted range of restrictions was starting to get to people, but the killer virus was still hugely prevalent in our region and health bosses wanted to show that.
It’s an experience I will never forget. Watching otherwise healthy people grasping for air in that unit all around me was harrowing. Observing the unbelievable efforts of the heroic staff, who were working under the most intolerable of conditions, was beyond inspiring.
Five years on from the first lockdown, I find it impossible not to recall the experience of entering that ICU and the horror I witnessed inside it. There was the middle-aged man being flipped onto his front in a last, desperate attempt to get air into his failing lungs.
Then there was the disorientated woman, hooked up to a ventilator, with a collage of images of happy times with her family adorning the board behind her. I vividly remember the city hospitality worker who arrived at the hospital as a fit and health man and was left unable to breathe in front of me.
And I remember being told by staff about the taxi driver who died with his 10-year-old son watching through a nearby door, hands pressed helplessly against the glass.
I also remember that when we published my dispatch from the ICU, there were people on social media who accused us of making it all up.
One woman suggested I had hired actors to play the roles of the people who were dying in front of me, such was her inability to handle the reality of the crisis continuing to unfold in the country.
There were plenty of people who found our reporting important and valuable, but when I think back to the volume of abuse we received for describing what we witnessed, it was clearly a marker of what was to come in a digital world where conspiracy theories and disinformation have simply exploded.
This ever worsening digital landscape represents a huge challenge for journalists working today, particularly when you factor in what has happened to twitter/x since it was taken over by Elon Musk. But what it does mean, I believe, is that factual, accurate reporting of key events is more important than ever. It won’t get through to everyone, but we have to keep trying.
Thinking back to that day in the ICU, as well as the tragedy of those lives we saw slipping away, my other enduring memory is of the NHS staff and all they were going through.
I wonder how they are feeling five years on from that horrific time, when they stepped onto the frontline of chaos and pain every single day in a bid to keep the rest of us safe. I hope they are doing ok.
