A HELENSBURGH GP has lifted the lid for the first time on the efforts of local medical staff to prepare for, and cope with, Covid-19 in the area – and has revealed that he and others were braced for the virus to have a “catastrophic” impact.

Dr Nick Dunn said he and his colleagues were preparing to deal with up to 120 Covid cases every day – in Helensburgh alone – as the scale of what was facing the UK started to become clear in the spring.

Dr Dunn, a partner at Helensburgh Medical Centre with the practice of Dr McLachlan and Partners, was speaking at the latest in the series of Zoom ‘webinars’ organised by Helensburgh Community Council since the start of the national lockdown in March.

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Outlining the concern of local medical professionals about the potential effect of the virus, he told community councillors, and members of the public watching, about the growing alarm felt as they watched news coverage of the effect of Covid in Italy – the first country in Europe where the virus seriously took hold.

“We were seeing health services there being completely overrun with patients and not coping,” he said.

“What we were anticipating was that this might be catastrophic for the country.

“Shortly after that, Imperial College London published a paper with predictions of the numbers that they thought would be involved in a Covid pandemic in the UK.

“They were scary – so scary that the paper was actually suppressed, because they were concerned that the public would panic.

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“When we extrapolated the figures, we were scared we would have to deal with 120 patients a day with Covid in Helensburgh alone – which, when you consider the implications of the virus, and how infective it is, really was quite worrying.

“We were concerned we would very quickly become overwhelmed.

“We decided to get together as a ‘cluster’, involving the Arrochar, Kilcreggan, Garelochhead and both Helensburgh practices, to talk about where we were, how quickly we could respond to this and how quickly we could adapt our practices.”

Within a week of that realisation, plans were drawn up for a Covid assessment facility at the town’s Victoria Integrated Care Centre, at the building normally used for out-patient clinics.

Dr Dunn also described how, thanks to the public’s adherence to social distancing and other measures to limit the spread of the virus, those anticipated patient numbers did not materialise – and explained that the town’s Covid assessment centre has since been moved to two portable offices in the car park at Helensburgh Medical Centre in East King Street.

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He also said he had confidence in the safety of vaccines being developed to protect people around the world from the disease.

“Because lockdown has been so successful, the reality was maybe 10-12 patients a day with possible Covid in the Helensburgh area,” he continued, though that number has since fallen to four or five per day.

“We’re able to manage that expectantly, but we have an escalation plan in place should we need to increase the number over the winter.

“I would have absolutely no concerns about the safety of the vaccines.

“They have been thoroughly tested, and the advantage of having vaccines now is that they will hopefully get us moving forward to some kind of normality come the summer.”

The first vaccinations against Covid-19 are expected to be given to priority groups in Scotland – health and social care staff, older residents of care homes, and people aged over 80 in the community – in December.

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