A YEAR after the first confirmed Covid-19 cases in Britain, health workers have been left “burned out, fatigued and desperately sad.”

These words, from intensive-care nurse Joanne Morrell, sum up the toll that the year-long struggle against coronavirus has had and is taking on dedicated health-service staff.

But with well over 100,000 people’s lives now cut short by the coronavirus, which saw its first confirmed cases in Britain a year ago today, NHS workers and their unions still find themselves demanding action — on testing, staffing and protective equipment.

Ms Morrell, who works at the Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, said she would not have believed last March that she and her colleagues would still be dealing with the pandemic nearly a year later.

“We’ve got through it, but I just don’t know how we have,” she said — but the hardest part had been witnessing “the people that are dying unnecessarily.”

“We’re all burned out, we’re all fatigued, but we are also desperately sad.

“When we had the highest death rate — and in one day more people died in this country than in the whole of the pandemic in Australia— that actually broke my heart.

“How’s it got to this point? How have we got to over 100,000 people dead? How?”

Ms Morrell said she was “super proud” of the work she and her NHS colleagues had done.

“I feel very lucky — I don’t want that to sound contrived because it’s such an awful time — but it has brought out the very, very best in the NHS for sure,” she said.

GPs have also seen an increased workload, including taking on some of the work that hospitals are too overrun to do and a rise in mental health issues.

Emily Ball, a GP in north-west England and an EveryDoctor team member, said surgeries do not have the capacity to treat patients with less urgent health issues.

GMB national officer Rachel Harrison said that NHS staff morale was “at an all-time low” after a year fighting Covid-19, warning that “exhaustion and anxiety” had become the norm and a mental-health crisis was looming.

“Not only have staff had to fight the virus — they have had to fight every step of the way for PPE, testing and vaccinations,” Ms Harrison said.

“With any potential pay increase being delayed and continuing issues with inadequate PPE for many GMB members it’s no wonder 60 per cent are considering leaving the NHS.”

The Unite union’s national officer for health Colenzo Jarrett-Thorpe said: “The government could have helped ease the strain, which the NHS, after 10 years of austerity, pay cuts and accumulated staff shortages, felt, and still feels, acutely.

“Instead, the government has failed to address the issue of a much-needed proper pay rise for health workers, making the endemic issues of recruitment and retention even worse.

“Compounding the situation, ministers handed billions to private companies to set up a test-and-trace system that has never been fit for purpose.

“The breathtaking amounts wasted could have been spent much more effectively if local government and health authorities were put in charge of tracking the virus in their own areas. 

“Many of the mistakes made by government during this crisis, from locking down too late to confusing and contradictory health messages, could have been avoided.”

The government still had time to resolve many of the issues the NHS and its workers are facing, said Mr Jarrett-Thorpe, but a “thorough inquiry” into the government’s response was needed “sooner rather than later.”

The Socialist Campaign Group of MPs today joined the growing call for the government to adopt the zero-Covid strategy that has effectively eliminated the virus in many Pacific and East Asian countries.

The group said that without this urgent change of approach “many tens of thousands more Covid deaths are likely.”

It also called on Labour to step up its campaigning for a new public-health strategy that will drive virus levels down and for the economic support needed to help people get through the crisis.