A Medical Emergency Assistant who works at Southend University Hospital has made a passionate plea (scroll down for video) for people to stay at home as more and more front line medical staff move out of their family homes to protect the vulnerable members of their families.
In the plea, shared in the ‘Emergency Services News – Community‘ group on Facebook, Shanice starts the video by saying that it has been ‘an emotional morning’ as she fights to hold back the tears.
“Last night, me and my partner agreed that I should leave the family home due to [the] vulnerable people under [our] roof.
“My mother-in-law currently lives with us, and she has got really chronic asthma and is susceptible to pneumonia has got Crohn’s (disease).
“She is very high risk. I have a two-year-old as well.
“So we came to the agreement last night that I would leave the family home today.
“This morning, I woke up and packed my things. Honey (daughter) was going about her day as normal…She is only a two-year-old. She doesn’t understand.
“I told Honey that Mummy is going away for a while. I said that Mummy is going to work. She said ‘Mummy, can I come?’..I said ‘no darling, you can’t’.
“So I said my goodbyes to her, and as any normal parent would do, I started to cry. She looked at me and said: “Mummy, why are you sad?”
“She grabbed her sleeve and wiped my tears away with her sleeve”.
Shanice added that the number of suspected cases of people with COVID-19 was “flooding through the doors” at her hospital in Southend-on-sea.
“Guys; you need to stay indoors,” Chanice said as she pleaded with the public to help contain the virus. “I’m petrified of going to work, petrified. But I have to go to work”.
“You have to stay indoors. There is nothing so special out there for you to be going out.
“Yeah, the sun is shining. But you might be dead in a few weeks because you wanted to go out and get some fresh air and mingle with people and not keep to the two-metre distance.
“Guys, you really need to get your priorities straight. Go home. Stay home. Protect your children. Protect the vulnerable that [sic] you could potentially be infecting.
“I’m struggling to buy things like eggs because the shelves are bare. It just seems so surreal”.
The video shares what has become a frequent account of front line NHS staff moving out of their homes to protect their family members who are vulnerable to the virus.
For the government’s latest advice on how to beat COVID-19, visit: www.gov.uk/coronavirus

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