We spoke to Beauly GP Dr Ross Jaffrey, who looks back at the start of the pandemic in 2020.
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00:00It was really quite frightening, so I think that this was something that was completely
00:07new, something that we didn't know how dangerous, although we were getting a feeling of how
00:13dangerous it might be from what we were seeing in Italy, and I think there was a lot of fear.
00:17I'm Dr Ross Jaffrey, I'm a GP based out in Beaulieu at Croydon Road Medical Practice.
00:23We closed the surgery on the 13th of March. We were probably one of the first surgeries
00:27to do that, and I think that that was really I think what started to trigger what could
00:33you do in a community when nationally not much was happening. Although a lot of people
00:39feel that GP practices weren't, we were still taking calls every day, we were still seeing
00:45people face to face, and I think that's one of the things that I think has been slightly
00:50manipulated in that there's still this thought process that doctors weren't seeing people
00:57face to face, but if you were unwell, we were still seeing you face to face, and often
01:03putting ourselves at risk, and I think that there's few professions where you put yourself
01:12in the front line trying to stop something you don't really know what might do to you.
01:18One of the very first things that myself and Royce did was organise a will. That was in
01:23the first week of just before lockdown, and I volunteered to be one of the first to front
01:31up at the COVID hub, but we needed to make sure that we had these things in place. That's
01:36how frightening it was. We didn't know what was going to happen. We didn't know what would
01:40happen if you caught it. Then you were feeling guilty, would you bring it home? So we had
01:46an operation at home where we went in through the garage, took all our clothes off, went
01:52to a shower, cleaned down, and we had to do that cyclically throughout that first few
01:59months. There was a huge lack of communication of what was happening at the local level,
02:05and how could I do something to try and help. One aspect of it was because we had no real
02:12treatment for COVID-19, avoiding getting it was the key. So pushing out, I would say,
02:21common sense, public messages, trying to make sure you washed your hands. But we did find
02:25that there was a lack of things like hand sanitiser, so I was able to link in with local
02:32distilleries. I think that does help in the position of someone that hopefully might trust
02:39you, then they will listen to you, and I did find that. So the whisky industry were
02:44actually quite open to an approach. They were really open to trying to help, and through
02:49that I was able to introduce hand sanitiser stations to lots of villages in and around
02:57our area which might not have had access to hand sanitiser. And then eventually was able
03:04to then communicate case levels, and try and reduce fear, because we really weren't
03:10seeing a huge amount of cases in our area. But that wasn't the general consensus from
03:17the media, which I think, you know, it helps to stay as relaxed as possible and not feel
03:23that you're about to die at home. And there was an element of that as well, just trying
03:28to reassure people. One of the downsides, I think, of the pandemic is that there has
03:34been an apathy, there has been a build of a small cohort of people that distrust vaccines.
03:43But we have had vaccines for a lot longer than COVID-19 has existed, and they have been
03:47a cornerstone of our public health measures, and I think that without them, we would struggle
03:54to combat preventable disease. And I think we're now starting to see a re-emergence of
03:59that in certain parts of the world, including the States, where you've got measles outbreaks
04:04hitting the news, and these historical illnesses are relevant, they are quite scary. And these
04:12are conditions we do know everything about, and we do have an option that we can use to
04:18mitigate that risk. I think that, what have I seen in terms of a debrief post-pandemic?
04:24Has there been, you know, an action plan put in place that would make things better this
04:29time around? I can't say I've seen an awful lot of change. I would say that there's an
04:36awareness now of what you probably have to do, so I think we'd probably be able to set
04:39up quite quickly. But whether we have the equipment and the facility to have it any
04:44different to how we did it before, I still think there's probably a little bit of doubt.
04:50There's lots of different things that I think, you know, we're aware of what we probably
04:53have to do, but whether there's the tools to intervene is still a little bit up for
04:59conjecture, I would say. I think people's awareness of what can happen with an unknown
05:05problem is something I think we'll probably never do what we did again. The mechanisms
05:12that were used were quite blunt and probably didn't need to be, so I hope we learnt a lot
05:17from some of the downsides as well as some of the upsides of the way the country managed
05:23the pandemic. I think there's still a lot of questions to be answered in respect to
05:29some of the negative things, but I think as a country we did pull together and I think
05:36did our best in a difficult circumstance. Five years on, I was just delighted to be
05:41able to go and visit people, see people, and I think it really does highlight the importance of community.