This is no way a dig at front line NHS who are only doing their best in the circumstances but I don’t understand why more capacity was not created in the last 6 months.
You have millions of unemployed - some with some first aid training like cabin crew etc that could have been fast tracked to create specialist roles to assist in ICU’s and work assist front line staff. Not perfect but would have provided more capacity and jobs.
We’ve spent 6 months catching up with the workload caused by suspending normal services in March. NHS England are still telling us to continue elective services as normal so we simply cannot create surge capacity for a pandemic and carry on elective services. Something has to give but the powers at be have spoken.
You couldn’t train somebody with no prior experience to be a specialist in anything in that time. It takes years of investment in recruitment and training, often at a university level, to get what we need for a high quality health system. What we need are nurses (Especially ICU nurses), doctors, lab techs, radiographers, pharmacists, OTs, physios, social workers, then more beds, more scanners, more ventilators, more kit in general for these people to do their jobs. Many NHS hospitals were built 100 years ago and are already operating at 85%+ capacity without a pandemic. There just isn’t the physical space to put more patients even if we did have all this stuff.
I believe the Manchester nightingale is opening this week. But the staff is being borrowed from trusts throughout the north west, creating shortages elsewhere. This is what happens when central government defunds and asset strip a health service for over a decade.
Not getting at you, I appreciate your comment is aimed for at higher management and government rather than frontline staff.
no end in sight and numbers still very high.
I feel like I've been hit by a bus. I just don't know if it's worth getting a test or if it's a waste? 
