Duty Calls: Frontline Northampton nurse shares how her patients, her team and sheer grit get her through each day

In a new series of interviews, the Chronicle & Echo will be talking to the front line staff of Northampton General Hospital who are fighting the pandemic amid the worst rate of infections and recorded deaths yet so far.

"It feels like we're in a war sometimes," says Intensive Therapy Nurse Amanda, rubbing her face.

"You can sit and look across the ward at these tired staff who are on their knees but keep going.

"It's like a war in the way there's this camaraderie. I've found you don't know what your strengths are until you're put in these situations. I'm so proud of our team. I've seen them all do amazing things."

During the first wave, she at times held back from talking to people about life on the ward to spare scaring people.

Now, the UK is recording the highest death rates in the world. Amanda isn't afraid of talking about it now.

"We're getting these ridiculous claims by people who don't believe Covid-19 is real and I don't know how we can get you to understand how it is - that is not the reality of what we're living with right now.

"Every day, we're seeing people coming in and struggling to breath. They need ventilating and oxygen.

"But above all they're anxious and they're scared."

In fact, Amanda really isn't afraid to say how it's going. She shakes her head exasperated.

"We're seeing multiple people from the same families die. You go through a day where you help a 14-year-old girl have a video call with her mother who's losing her fight with Covid.

"And people think it's just the elderly. It's not. If they knew how many young people with no medical history are dying.

"And people don't understand. How can they? Even if it's reported on TV, that doesn't show the reality.

"What we're doing now will stay with us our whole careers."

Amanda says what plays on her mind the most is the constant, ever-present gap by patients' beds where relatives should be but can't.

The staff on ITU - on all wards - have had to double their duties in the last year. They have always cared for their patients, but now they are the only ones there to hold a person's hand without their families. They are the ones who help patients get by using video calls, and the ones who console them when they hang up.

She says: "I think the main thing I want the public to know is we never leave our patients on their own. For everyone who has a loved one on the ward and you can't see them, we never leave them on their own.

"Ultimately it's the patients who keep us going. We wouldn't get up at five in the morning and do this if it wasn't for the patients."

Amanda is one of hundreds of frontline healthcare staff at Northampton General who have had no choice but to draw on something for strength if they want to get through each week. By equal measures it seems to be the support of their team, the welfare of their patients and their own grit,

But for all of that, cases will not stop rising and the workload keeps getting heavier.

"Of course we take it home," Amanda says. "I must cry about it at some point every week.

"It's the little wins that keep us all going - trying to get someone's oxygen requirements down, seeing someone leave who was in trouble when they arrived.

"I won't lie though - we're not having many little wins right now. But sometimes getting through the day is a win on its own.

"But you know what? We don't want sympathy. We don't want you to 'clap'. We want you to wash your hands and wear a mask. Is it weird to remind someone to wash their hands? Seems normal to me."