People
On the front line
Roopa Farooki
When Roopa Farooki was writing her real-time account of life as a junior doctor during the pandemic, she hoped she would look back at the experience “from a place of wisdom and learning.” But two years on, another serious Covid wave is hitting her Kent hospital. She’s speaking to me after a 13-hour shift; during her 20-minute break she was interrupted five times by GPs paging her about patients.
Most of those she sees hospitalised by the virus are unvaccinated patients in their 20s and 30s—something “very frustrating,” she admits. Her real ire, though, is reserved for the rule-breaking PM. “I feel quite strongly that the political leadership should have put things in place to make things better.”