EXHAUSTED frontline NHS workers have warned of a mental heath timebomb.
Battling Covid is putting them under massive strain — with one paramedic grimly predicting: “The fallout will be profound.”
Will Broughton, 29, said he and colleagues are crammed into the back of ambulances for hours on end with infected patients gasping for breath.
Hospitals are bucking under the pressure of the new strain, with critically low space to treat victims.
And experts said it was “like watching a car crash in slow motion” — while warning of an even bigger wave of cases next week.
London paramedic Mr Broughton revealed ambulance staff were routinely slogging 14-hour days without a break, with most working seven-day weeks.
He told Trending In The News on Sunday: “It’s having an impact on everybody.
“We feel an incredible sense of duty, but the impact on the mental health of ambulance staff is going to be profound when this is all over.”
Prof Andrew Goddard, President of the Royal College of Physicians, said: “The new variant is more infectious, more transmissible, so I think the large numbers that we’re seeing in the South East, in London, in South Wales, is now going to be reflected over the next month, two months even, over the rest of the country.”
And Dr Adrian Boyle, of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said Brits who needed ambulances after suffering life-threatening medical episodes such as heart attacks were now more likely to die.
He warned: “This feels like we are back as we were in March or April but there is a virus that is more infectious.
“The ambulance queues outside hospitals means they can’t go and respond to heart attacks or road accidents. It is extremely concerning.”
Some 29 of 39 London hospital trusts said they had paused nearly all procedures except for cancer treatment and emergencies.
Others outside London, such as Kent, have made similar moves.
Meanwhile Prof Neil Mortensen, president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, said it was “like watching a car crash in slow motion”.
He told The Times: “At the same time as people returned to work, to restaurants and shops, the new variant insidiously took hold in the south and east of England.”
