PROFESSOR JOHN WRIGHT, a public health doctor and Director of the Bradford Institute for Health Research at Bradford Royal Infirmary, has been at the heart of the hospital’s response to the Covid-19 crisis. Here are excerpts from his pandemic diary for BBC Radio 4’s The NHS Front Line, published by the Telegraph & Argus over the past year.

* April 3 2020: The Covid crisis is intensifying. By the start of the week numbers have risen from just a few patients in isolated rooms to two full ‘red zones’. Two more turn red a day later, and within days 14 patients have died. Prof Wright: “We are used to people dying in hospital. Normally we are reflective in our practice, we give time. But today we are making rapid decisions about life and death - decisions about ventilation, escalation care and when to make the decision about end of-life-care.”

* April 13: Bradford district’s death toll stands at 76. Prof Wright praises residents for obeying the stay at home guidelines but adds it doesn’t look like lockdown will be lifted soon: “Everybody was anxious about how we’d cope with the surge. The surge is happening. We are coping very well in the hospital. It’s busy, it’s frenetic. Staff are responding to the challenge. But it’s too early to say that we have reached the top of this.

“We were trying to get people social distancing and to stay at home. People have listened to that. This is going to be a long game. This is not going away. Everybody needs to be patient.”

* April 30: Prof Wright delivers a stark warning: “The roll call of NHS workers who have died from Covid-19 grows every day and the deaths get closer to home and increasingly familiar. None of our staff at the hospital have died yet, but there is a grim inevitability that this will change.”

Kelly Ward, a palliative care nurse who had Covid and thought she thought she was going to die, tells him: “I think everybody will get a dose of it, but I didn’t expect it to hit with full force because I’m normally fit and well. You can see why people with underlying health conditions don’t survive it.”

Says Prof Wright: “There is a dreadful peculiarity about how Covid-19 takes over. Fevers and coughs are common symptoms of viral infection, but the effect on breathing is truly frightening. All too often they believe they’re going to die - fighting for breath, drowning in air.”

A consultant psychiatrist tells Prof Wright: “There’s no doubt there’ll be more people with anxiety, depression, sort of post traumatic stress disorder - all those things will come out both for patients as well as staff members on the frontline. I think there will be a big surge...for mental health services. The other thing to factor in is the financial impact. In lockdown a lot of people have become unemployed - it’s how they will cope with this and for how long and whether there will be more domestic violence, drug use, alcohol use. I think we’re looking at a tsunami coming with regards to mental health needs we’ll have to cater to once all this is over.”

* October 19: Prof Wright tells of “battle fatigue” in a second wave: “The number of Covid patients has stabilised at around 80 - 10 on ICU, not far off our peak in April, but unlike the first wave we’re doing our best to keep all our services running as much as we can. We have learnt hard lessons. Our treatments are better and we are managing patients with Teutonic efficiency and insightful compassion. The chaos of PPE shortages is a distant memory, with scrubs and visors laid out in the ward donning rooms like a bespoke tailor’s shop. Having said that, the number of patients on oxygen did briefly cause oxygen shortage alarms earlier in the week. But there is another change. This time we are no longer heroes. This is the new normal.”

* December 17: Prof Wright tests positive for Covid for the second time. He takes part in a self-testing scheme for frontline workers the day before a “precious” visit to his 89-year-old father, who he’s only seen once in 2020: “The omnipresent virus had other plans. A hollow emptiness grew as the positive line grew stronger. In denial, I quickly repeated the test, with the same result. Next morning I had my PCR swab and on the Saturday was notified that this too was positive. The visit to my dad was off and I began 10-day isolation with my wife, Helen, a front-line medic, who had the Pfizer vaccine. So here we are: I have the SARS-CoV-2 virus and she has the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine - disease and cure, villain and hero, yin and yang under one roof.

“There is much debate in medical journals about the evidence for rapid, asymptomatic, mass testing. However, this week it may well have saved my dad’s life.

* February 15: Prof Wright says Covid may become a feature of our lives, much the same way as seasonal flu: “It is becoming clearer that we’re unlikely to reach zero Covid. Rather, we will see ongoing outbreaks as our immunity waxes and wanes. One analogy foresees the current forest fire of cases becoming a bonfire, then a pile of smouldering embers, and after that just smoke, followed by small fires sparking up, perhaps in winter months.”

* February 19: Prof Wright says there are “real seeds of hope” as Covid hospital admissions fall: “What we’re finding is that rates are falling, particularly in over-60s. This is the combination of lockdown and the vaccination roll-out. In BRI we’re seeing significant falls in number of admissions and deaths. I think we should be cautious, it’s still early days and we still have high rates of the virus circulating, back to where we were in September/October.”

* March 11: One year since the first coronavirus ward was set up at BRI. NHS colleagues gather to remember patients who entered Ward 31 and never left.. It was set up 10 days after Bradford’s first confirmed Covid case. Just over two weeks later, Prof Wright said the district could require 30 times more intensive care beds than it normally had - learning lessons about contamination from hospitals in Wuhan.