Surviving COVID: COVID-19 and the long road to recovery A short film on the long-term impact of COVID-19

Emma Ouldred [specialist nurse]: Good afternoon, Tobi. My name's Emma. I'm one of the specialist nurses here. Can I just ask you a couple of questions? OK, lovely. Can you tell me where we are? What's this place?

Tobi: Buckingham Palace.

Emma Ouldred: You know, we're at King's College Hospital.

Emma Ouldred: The thing about Tobi, he's fluctuated, so there's times when he's a lot more alert than other times. Other times he's really drowsy. So it's ongoing delirium and it's very distressing, not just for the patient but also their families and staff as well.

Anne McLoone [critical care matron]: I think the general public don't have an understanding of what patients go through. Some of our patients were in critical care for 40, 50 days. The impact that it had on them was huge. The thing that really struck me when they came out of the intensive care unit, some of them were so weak they couldn't even hold a cup or a glass. They were really, really weak and the fatigue with COVID is a lot worse than any other patient. They can't even go up the stairs.

Danielle Farrimond [physiotherapist]: That's it. Once you do the first one, that's the hardest one over and done with. Three...up. Good job. Yes! Well done!

Niall McDermott [ITU occupational therapist]: It wasn't until after week three of the first wave that we started to see this flow of patients waking up. And then we started to identify a large amount of problems. They were waking up with neurological conditions, cardiac conditions, sensory problems, visual problems.

Dr Tom Best: Virtually every organ got affected by this illness. So not only did the lungs become affected for many days and often weeks, and months sometimes, other organs like the kidneys, brain, gut all got affected as well.

Dr Rob Elias: Tobi has survived COVID, but he has been very severely affected by COVID. His kidneys failed, he has had strokes, he has had several cardiac arrests whilst being in hospital. He will not fully recover the brain function that he had before this. We're planning to discharge him with an awful lot of care and support in the community.

Ola: It wasn't a nice thing COVID did at all. It has really changed him. And sometimes I feel so selfish, like, 'Oh, did I pray this person back to life, to come and be in this shape?'.

Anne McLoone: They need a lot of physiotherapy when they come out of intensive care. They need speech and language therapists. They need psychological therapy as well. It can take well up to a year, sometimes a bit longer, to get over intensive care and to get over COVID.

Amina: No,wait. Wait, wait, gently, gently. Wait! Wait! Wait!

Niall McDermott: A large group of patients will potentially have a long disability for life. So rehab is going to be essential now going forward. We've never seen the number of patients in ICU that we've seen during wave one. You've tripled the patient cohort, you've tripled the pressure on the services.

Anne McLoone: To get physiotherapy places for patients is really, really hard. And there's a long waiting list. It is pressure on the NHS but, in the long run, it's more cost-effective.

Ola: So there's so many things to adjust to and I'm still learning to be fair. Because before COVID he was independent. He wasn't relying on someone to tell him, 'Oh, do you want to listen to music?' or, 'Do you want to watch the news?'. Those are the kind of questions I ask him really. But we are grateful for life and very hopeful.

Ola (singing): # As we gather Lord Jesus, as we gather, may we glorify your name Lord Jesus #