Can the NHS recover from coronavirus?
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 9 July 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The pandemic will impact the way healthcare is delivered for years to come. At the same time as preparing for a possible second wave, the NHS also has to work its way through a backlog of delayed appointments and treatments. Waiting lists could top 10 million people this year.
David Aaronvicth asks the experts what Covid-19 has done to healthcare in the UK and how can it recover:
Journalist Chris Cook specialises in the public sector and is an editor and partner at Tortoise Media Rachel Schraer is a health reporter for BBC News Dr Jennifer Dixon is the chief executive of the Health Foundation Professor Carol Propper is a health economist at Imperial College London and President of The Royal Economics Society Nigel Edwards is chief executive of the Nuffield Trust an independent health think tank.
Producers: Kirsteen Knight, Beth Sagar Fenton, Joe Kent Studio manager: Neva Missirian Editor: Jasper Corbett.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the briefing room with me, David Aronovich. |
| 0:05.0 | It's a complicated world, but the briefing room is one place you and I can go to make sense of it. |
| 0:11.0 | In just under half an hour with the help of top experts, |
| 0:15.0 | we can try and get across one of the big issues of the day. |
| 0:19.0 | This week, what will the NHS look like the other side of the pandemic? |
| 0:27.8 | It all seems like such a long time ago now. |
| 0:33.1 | In Italy, there's been the biggest daily rise in deaths since the beginning of the outbreak there. |
| 0:38.3 | Really shocking figures. Like Italy is losing the equivalent of a village a day, 919 deaths in the past 24 hours. |
| 0:45.3 | Back in early March, we watched as parts of the Italian health system more or less collapsed. |
| 0:51.3 | This is the front line in Italy's battle against the coronavirus. |
| 0:55.2 | A battle doctors say they're losing. |
| 0:58.3 | This is one of Europe's most advanced hospitals on its knees. |
| 1:03.5 | Without a huge national effort to stop the spread of coronavirus, |
| 1:07.6 | there will come a moment when no health service in the world could possibly cope. |
| 1:13.6 | So, protecting the NHS became the national priority, and we were to do our bit for it |
| 1:18.6 | by staying at home. As of today, the NHS has survived its biggest ever challenge. But |
| 1:25.6 | at what cost to patients, present and future, and at what cost to staff? |
| 1:31.2 | Step inside the briefing room and together we'll find out. |
| 1:40.6 | Before we can make sense of where the pandemic has left the NHS, |
| 1:44.8 | we need to understand what state it was in before the pandemic arrived. |
| 1:49.5 | Chris Cook is a journalist with Tortoise Media, |
| 1:51.9 | and he specialises in public policy. |
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