Portsmouth (United Kingdom) (AFP)

"I never thought I would do that in my career!": Dan Joslin, a 33-year-old firefighter, has been assigned to Portsmouth hospital (southern England) for a few weeks to help the care department intensive in managing Covid-19 patients.

The 14-year shift supervisor is one of 27 firefighters, including women, posted to four establishments in Portsmouth and Hampshire County.

Dressed in a distinctive red blouse, they take turns every twelve hours.

According to Alex Rhodes, head of the Hampshire fire stations, this is the "first time" that they have been employed full time in an intensive care unit.

"It's totally new," he told AFP, hoping that in the event of a new wave, other counties will imitate them, to relieve overworked hospital staff.

The United Kingdom is the most bereaved country in Europe by the pandemic, with more than 126,500 dead and 4.3 million cases of contamination.

The new, more transmissible variant of the virus, which emerged in the south-west of England, has skyrocketed hospital admissions during the winter, straining the NHS health system.

All the emergency services were suddenly mobilized and some firefighters called in to drive ambulances, or help in vaccination centers.

- "Helping hand" -

For Cate Leighton, NHS administrator for the Portsmouth region, this help is more than "welcome".

"The intensive care team and the entire hospital are incredibly grateful for the enthusiasm and dedication of the firefighters," she said, who provided "a real boost in these difficult times."

Their "fantastic" asset compared to other volunteers?

They are "used to working with trauma patients or in intensive care," says Ms. Leighton.

"We are used to dealing with high levels of psychological stress," confirms Dan Joslin.

At the start of their mission, the 27 firefighters were mainly assigned to patients with breathing difficulties, with manipulations to improve their breathing requiring up to 6 people because of the many hoses to which they are attached.

Then they helped with a whole series of tasks and now their mission will soon be completed as the number of hospitalizations decreases.

Dan believes that this mission to Queen Alexandra Hospital opened his eyes to the daily reality of hospital staff during the health crisis.

"We are impressed with what the nurses and all the staff in the intensive care unit did," he says.

If he has unfortunately seen "die a large number of patients" during these last six weeks, he especially wants to retain the joy of the doctors when patients "in bad enough condition" recover sufficiently to be able to leave intensive care.

Used to working in the "first hour" following an accident, Dan and his colleagues have also discovered a different rhythm, "much calmer, much more supervised".

And if their services were required again, firefighters would hesitate, ready to deploy to intensive care units within 24 hours, Dan says.

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