Coronavirus will force hospital chiefs to make some terrible choices | Polly Toynbee

Our stripped-down NHS will not be able to cope when Covid-19 peaks, leaving it to officials to decide who lives and who dies
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"Horrible decisions will be made about who lives and who dies," says the chief executive of a large hospital trust. "And I will be the one to make them. Liability sits with me." This manager, somewhere in England, dare not say who he is - "Everyone is under a total media blackout" - but he doesn't think silence a good policy. "Any vacuum will get filled by Twitter or the Daily Mail."

He has done the sums locally: he has 130,000 over-80s. He follows chief medical officer Chris Whitty's high estimate of an 80% infection rate, with 10% needing a bed and 4% intensive care. Even extending his 15 intensive care beds, he will never have enough. His staff are anxious, needing to know every detail of what's going on as he patrols his corridors.