Nobody could have prepared them for what was to come.

This is way sent Telia's respiratory ward.

The contrast for the intensive care unit with all yesterday at the trust's Epsom site couldn't be greater.

There it was full protection head to toe today, the rules say, just a surgical masks one of the first wards where we had an increase in patients needing spiritually support on.

So we turned it into what school on number hearing which are ready area.

This is nursing like they have never known.

How you feeling today?

Much worse.

Coming, Probably right.

60 year old Roseanna.

Good cell had been here for five days, and sitting up is better.

Often in my mind.

Staying up from sitting up more legs, Most stomach Brazil.

Blow it.

Hell yeah, OK, well, they just mind over matter.

The patient's hair and ST Helens covered wards are not so sick that they need to be an intensive care.

How was she?

Quite, but that's expected, but the ones we spoke to seemed shellshocked, not just their breath, but what had happened to them and the staff.

They don't have time to process this.

They just have to get on with it.

We have not stuff doing things that they had never done before.

So we got people working off technology.

For instance, swarming patients or staff in our reports show that stuff can get their results, that we have therapies to have just muscular Scalito stuff, waking unite to you looking after peace and Tonight.

So the response has been fantastic.

And we meet Lillian Bishop Campbell, a dietitian preparing to go into the red zone with the sicker, more infectious patients to help with lunch on a normal day.

We wouldn't feed the patients because of the current situation.

We're trying to help its staff have had to adapt.

The hospital has had to change.

They're learning as they go.

And they're asking questions.

Like the government, which has now announced on inquiry into whether black, Asian and minority ethnic people are disproportionately affected by covered 19.

Well, they're already noticed that here for me as a BME cheapness, it's important to record and recognize it.

I know that you know a preemie stuff, probably working very differently with a very different kind of bird and in terms of we're here.

We have families that hundreds and thousands of miles away, some of them, but but stuff are just really positive.

Have been responding, have been coming to work and do investor they can do for patients.

Epsom Insane Talia's was one of the first trusts in the country to be hit by the wave of covered 19 patients.

Keeping them alive on ventilators, giving hundreds of the time oxygen they needed.

New tanks and new piping.

It's something you would never think off a C T scanner in the car park, so non covered patients don't have to go into the hospital.

Would I be able to get you to show your movement of your wrists?

Virtual consultations.

They've had to reschedule 96 1000 appointments.

So when one of the operating theatres in Epsom General Hospital on a normal day, we would have been doing quite a lot of cancer diagnostic in cancer treatment surgery in this theater, and as you can see, it's empty.

The government bought up all of the capacity of a private hospitals on we have to local private hospitals, and we have been sending all of our urgent cancer patients and the urgent plant care operations to them to be operated on bean filming for two days now at Epsom and now here at ST Helena.

And the thing that stands out the most for those of us who spend a lot of time coming in and out of hospitals is just how quiet it is.

There aren't patients and the staff in corridors.

They're all busy on the wards or they're actually simply not here.

They're being kept away.

Just seeing, you know, I'm talking to you.

If I had a little plane on May, I could understand it, but didn't just call it just kind, you know?

They told me there.

The lungs, that's where they got me there.

Very frightening, very frightening indeed.

When they said that you can go, you know?

Well, Jesus, it's No, it's no, It's no annoying thing to be told.

What did they tell?

You know when you talk, would you go day one?

Yeah, Yeah, but there's not a lot you can do about it.

Is there really You what you will write?

Worried that you would go downhill, that you would want to go?

Daniel, quick.

I went down a little bit too quick for more like India.

But I got very good people around me.

Mr.

Smith has been in the hospital for two weeks.

He spent his 75th birthday in here.

In a neighboring room was 89 year old Brian Mason, a former policeman about to be released after 12 days.

What was interesting was thes two men had very different symptoms.

I had me home four guys.

Now I then started beating.

And I think from that old started feeling that much better.

Were you ever worried that you were going to get even more sick?

Do they warn you that you could deteriorate?

Yes.

What did they say?

I think your comment if it with some the fact that they thought that are being a bit lucky.

Do you feel you've been lucky?

Yeah to Yeah, very that more age.

Outside another ward, we meet Cheryl Kilic waiting to be let in to see her dying mother.

It, too, is an amber zone, meaning there could be some covered patients.

But the hospital recognizes the need for relatives to say goodbye on.

She's been giving 24 to 48 hours and they're living.

You go in and see you?

Yes, under they say, Done exception because you don't think it's long so much has had to change.

It can never be the same again.

The NHS will work in different ways from now, but life and death that is a constant yes, and we've just had some news.

And from Public health England.

They've just issued some new guidance on PPE personal protective equipment.

And they are saying whether acute shortages in time of extreme shortages there talking about the re use of some p p p p p e talking about masks, for instance, which could be reused some types of mosques and gowns they're talking about maybe replacing them with lab coats or washable long sleeve patient coats.

Now, what's interesting about this is that it is an agreement, really, that there is a problem with the supply chain, and I can fairly well guess this is not going to go down very well with stars who are already worried about the type of PP that they're having to use.

Not necessarily.