‘Christmas was awful’: on the Omicron frontline at the Royal Preston hospital

After nearly two years of pandemic, 5,000 inpatients and 1,000 deaths, the staff of one of the largest hospitals in north-west England are frustrated and exhausted

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After nearly two years on the Covid frontline, there is one image that haunts Prof Mohammed Munavvar. It is of a visit to Preston cemetery, where a friend had been laid to rest.

There he saw a pristine row of gravestones, each planted in the last year. They were all his patients. He knew every single name: That was terrible, really. It was very traumatic. Even now I think about that image."