Mark tileyThe ambulance crew faced a significant delay in trying to save patients who died in the epidemic, as it was given time to put on protective equipment, Kovid investigation has been told.
Ambulance technicians Mark Tily appeared close to tears, when he explained how the experience was still “played on his mind”.
He said, “I remove things. I have been told that I am very cold. I just deal with the way I deal with it.”
During the epidemic, some ambulance staff went to the budget hotel for a time to avoid endangering family members, he said.
‘Nothing to eat’
Mr. Tilli, who works for the South East Coast Ambulance Service, was giving evidence as the representative of the GMB Union.
In January 2021, at the peak of the winter wave of the epidemic, he voluntarily stepped into SittingBorn in North Kent for three weeks, with 40 colleagues.
A new version of the Covid that appeared to broadcast more rapidly, recently emerged in the region, and the hospitals were coming under increased pressure.
He told the investigation that, on one occasion, he had to queue in queue for a full ten -hour shift in his ambulance outside A&E as there was not enough space to move the “heavy deterioration” patient in the building.
“We will get out of oxygen, so we have to scan the hospital to try and find,” he said.
At that time, due to the lockdown rules, the volunteer ambulance crew were sleeping in a budget hotel, some decided not to return home to avoid keeping family members in danger.
“You were nowhere to go, so it was just facilities that were there: television and a phone,” he said.
“You had 12 hours (after your innings) which you were watching, to do the country on this; queues in the hospital, poor patients.”
Kovid inquiryIn his testimony, Mr. Tyley described arriving in residential houses, where the patients were dying “inside the front window or on the route”.
Under the guidance, paramedics and other ambulance staff were told that they would have to wait until they reach the spot before putting on plastic tyweight suits and protective hoods or masks.
He could spend a significant minute and one half to the crew before being able to start treatment: “I usually went up and started jumping up and down on their chest (to CPR).
“But (instead) we went and received our masks and suits and all on it – which plays all the time in my mind.
“For me, you cannot change history, no matter what you talk about is history. We cannot change it.”
The investigation advocate Ellis Hands said the commissioned research had revealed similar accounts, stated to the other ambulance crew that he was “forced not to intervene … and see people dying” when they put them on equipment.
In his evidence, NHS England National Ambulance Advisor Anthony Marsh and former chairman of the Chief Executive Officer of the Association of Ambulance, said that he was aware of those concerns at that time and raised the matter with senior colleagues.
But he said that the crew was allowed to place on the PPE when they were traveling at the scene to cut the total response time, “would not be safe”.
