Dr Ross Jaffrey - Five years after the first Covid-19 lockdown - video Dailymotion

Highland News & Media

We spoke to Beauly GP Dr Ross Jaffrey, who looks back at the start of the pandemic in 2020.

Transcript

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.

Dr Ross Jaffrey - Five years after the first Covid-19 lockdown

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