I’m a junior doctor, in my second year of work. As luck would have it, Covid-19 has caught me in my A&E rotation at a busy central London hospital.

As the pandemic began to develop, we would receive daily guidance from Public Health England (PHE) on whom we should swab and what kind of isolation advice to give. Initially, we were swabbing people with significant travel history and respiratory symptoms. The numbers climbed: 20, 30, 150, 450, 1,000 … By 10 March, the reality of community transmissions was apparent. The question of travel history became irrelevant.

The problem is that even with more ventilators, we need staff trained to operate them and look after ventilated patients

Now, we only swab people sick enough to come into hospital, which means we’ll have a falsely low number of confirmed cases. Meanwhile, the government continues to downgrade the quality of personal protective equipment (PPE) worn by NHS staff. Initially, we were wearing FFP3s, high-grade masks filtering out 99% of particles smaller than 0.6 microns, to see any patient with suspected Covid-19. Pretty quickly, demand exceeded supply. Suddenly, entire wards were set up purely for Covid-19 patients. On 11 March, we were informed there wasn’t sufficient evidence supporting the wearing of FFP3s. Instead, PHE advised “basic respiratory precautions”, like with flu. Now we are wearing the most basic surgical masks and a tissue-thin plastic apron to see entire wards of confirmed cases.

This is a terrifying decision. The most basic epidemiology shows coronavirus is a lot more infectious than flu and, with the virus spreading like wildfire in the community, surely we should be taking every precaution to stop its spread within the hospital? By not providing healthcare workers with adequate protection, not only is the government endangering the people at the frontline, they are putting at risk the vulnerable, frail inpatients who may catch it from an asymptomatic doctor, nurse, porter or cleaner.

As for the actual situation within hospitals, we’ve had to use the cancer ward, where every room is a side room; the “suspected Covids” coming in from A&E need to be isolated pending swab results. Once confirmed negative, patients are stepped down to a normal ward. This strategy is sensible but poses its own problems. First, cancer patients were put in side rooms for a reason. They’re often immunocompromised and thus need to be isolated for their own protection. Part of the collateral damage of Covid-19 is these vulnerable patients are now in open bays, sitting ducks for infection.

What does Covid-19 itself look like? I see an average of six to eight probable cases a night, and end up admitting one to two of them. And that’s just one A&E doctor. The clinical picture is invariably the same: cough, high fevers, generalised muscle ache with progressive difficulty in breathing. By the time they’re brought in by ambulance, they are severely oxygen-deprived. Chest X-rays show bilateral infiltrates with such a distinctive appearance that we can now recognise it at a glance. The ICU admissions have truly horrendous chest X-rays and require intubation. So far, about half to three-quarters of our ICU is Covid-19; across the UK, at time of writing, there have been 144 deaths.

The strain that Covid-19 is placing on the healthcare system is immense. All elective surgeries have been cancelled. Doctors are being moved to high-pressure areas such as A&E and general medicine. Anyone with experience of ICU and intubation is being redeployed back to ICU, where it is anticipated the numbers requiring ventilation will rise sharply over the next week. The government is frantically trying to source more ventilators. The problem is that even with more ventilators, we need staff trained to operate them and look after ventilated patients. A tall order, given the NHS in England is short of 10,000 doctors and 40,000 nurses.

So, please stay at home if you can, avoid unnecessary social contact, keep washing your hands and practise good basic hygiene. Stop stockpiling unnecessarily. Think of the frail and vulnerable the next time you go and clear out a whole shelf of food you won’t need. Think of them when you venture outside when you have symptoms. Whether we like it or not, we’re all in this together.

• Catherine Hsu is a second-year junior doctor in the NHS