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Larissa is an intensive care nurse at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. She lives in Aylesbury with her husband Graham and her two children, Skye and Tyler. Larissa saw the writing on the wall very early on in the crisis. “I’m frightened to hell when I get to work,” she admits. She’s seen a number of people breaking social distancing and worries how many of them will end up in hospital. “We will get through this…[but] the longer people don’t listen, the longer this is going to go on for.”

Larissa Thorne after wearing her PPE mask

It’s hard for Larissa to shake off the ever-presence of the Covid-19 threat, even when she returns home. “I literally Dettol [disinfectant] my arms, my face, my hair and everything. Even with the PPE [personal protective equipment] on, I still feel quite dirty.” Her sleep is affected too. “I wake up in the night, I suddenly think ‘Covid’, it’s a really bizarre feeling, and hopefully one that I will learn to live with and get over.”

Larissa has the added stress of worrying about her father, Tony, who has terminal cancer. “Being at work does take it off my mind a little, but I always worry that I am going to get that call [at work] about my dad.” She wonders that lockdown came too late to protect Tony, and so, inevitably, some days are tougher than others: “I feel like I can’t give my patients what they should be having, but I do, that’s probably why I am putting too much pressure on myself, because you look after people the way you would want to be looked after, or the way your parents should be looked after - or anybody.”

Towards the end of her diary entries, Larissa endures a horrendous incident at a supermarket where a man deliberately coughs in her face. She’s shaken but undeterred. “I can’t believe people would be so cruel, I want to look after people to the best of my ability, I am very proud of who I work with, such an amazing team who are doing such a sterling job under circumstances, I couldn’t be prouder.”

Maziar is an intensive care consultant in London and has to assess who is right for critical care at his hospital, giving him a heavy responsibility for life and death decisions. “The sense of not being able to cure people is always a challenge for somebody in my position,” he says, “but when you face such a mass of patients that you cannot cure, it breaks you into pieces.”

As ventilators become more and more in demand, Maziar has an increasing amount of difficult decisions to make. Among the patients that Maziar has to deny treatment to because of underlying conditions is a man in his eighties. “This gentleman had a significant resemblance to my own father, so my discussion with him affected me very, very much,” says Maziar.

The pressure on resources is proving too much as well. “This is the third consecutive day we don’t have enough visors and goggles to protect ourselves. Our other hospital, which is attached to us, is running out of capacity for oxygen supply and they are going to send a lot of patients to the other site.”

Things get worse before they get better. Maziar finishes shifts signing a lot of ‘Do Not Attempt CPR’ forms and is understandably experiencing low mood. “It is very hard when you take the chance of life from some people.”

When the situation starts to ease, Maziar is understandably drained and exhausted. He knows that it has been hard for everyone, and he’s observed that the NHS staff “always had worries in the back of their mind that they might take a deadly virus home and expose their families to illnesses.”

“I really hope that NHS has some reserves, so that when we are stretched we can cope with the difficult times.”

Anita is a midwife and nurse who lives on the South Coast with her young daughter. As someone who is looking after people with Coronavirus, she’s inevitably worried about the risk of infection and feels that she needs more protection.

“This week I was asked to look after someone with suspected coronavirus,” says Anita.

“We were told that until the swabs come back – which is taking 2-3 days the moment - we’re to use surgical masks and gown and gloves when we’re treating them. But I’m just not convinced, and the thought I could potentially test positive for coronavirus before showing symptoms…and I’m a midwife. I want to work, and I want to work safely, but all I can think is I’ll just keep washing my hands.”