Hello I'm Nula McGovern on the BBC World Service and this is BBC OS, conversations about

coronavirus, intensive care.

As coronavirus numbers in some countries continue to reach record highs,

doctors share their experiences in ICUs as well as predictions for the future. Plus parents in Kenya and

Pakistan discuss the effects of prolonged school closures for children.

My two kids like the youngest one, she is six, well she has no social set up now again, no friends around,

and she is like a very difficult child nowadays.

The successful development of vaccines for COVID-19 has made many of us more hopeful for the future, but it is clear that the pandemic still maintains a dangerous

grip.

The World Health Organization has warned of an alarming situation across Europe. Countries such as the US and South Africa are also among

those seeing a surge of cases and hospitalizations. And this is placing

renewed stress on intensive care units or ICUs

which have been on that stressful front line of the disease

since the start of the pandemic.

Dr Debbie Baker is a critical care physician in an ICU in South Africa.

Dr. Joao Alo, a rheumatologist and physician at Paris State University in Brazil, working with COVID patients in Santorem in the Amazon

Rainforest, and Dr Joseph Veron, the chief of staff at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, Texas, in the United States, a country where

over 370,000 people have now died from the disease. I began by asking Dr Joseph what it was like in his hospitals ICU.

The best way to explain it is chaotic.

Between midnight and 5 o'clock in the morning today, I've received six new admissions to my COVID

ICU, patients that are deadly ill, extremely sick, and this is happening day in and day out every single day. My nurses are

extremely tired. I mean they are to the point of breaking down. It's chaotic.

...