BBC NEWS: Pandemic puts physiotherapists in spotlight

There are steady accounts of medics’ battle to save the lives of Covid patients. Amid the reports it becomes clear the task is a marathon and not a sprint, with no one-size-fits-all approach to treatment and recovery. Physiotherapists are among those in it for the immediate and then longer haul. This is the story of the specialists whose daily lives have changed.

There are those who get Covid-19 and are asymptomatic. Others show mild effects. And some have more severe reactions requiring hospital treatment.

Those patients may need just a helping hand to get them through. But some will need intensive care, or even be placed in induced comas.

In such cases, whether during or after, organs and limbs are tested by Covid. And even beating the virus may not mean a steady road ahead without long rehabilitation.

Think of those whose lungs were aided by mechanical ventilators. Or the people coming out of comas to take their first steps after days – or weeks.

For some physiotherapists, thinking about them is all they do.

“Covid for us is 24/7,” said Will Hook, a senior physiotherapist in intensive care at a hospital in Dudley, West Midlands.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-55638208