HARROWING video shows coronavirus patients on ventilators in a Liverpool hospital as doctors beg people to stick to the rules.
Liverpool City Council posted warnings from frontline NHS medics on a Covid-19 intensive-care ward at Royal Liverpool University Hospital.
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One sister warned conditions on the ITU ward as the second wave engulfs the city are like "your worst nightmare".
Footage shows patients with the virus being treated by brave NHS medics who urged people outside to follow social distancing rules.
This week, Liverpool City Region was plunged into "very high risk" lockdown Tier 3 amid warnings hospital critical care beds are more than 90 per cent full.
Louise Lightfoot, an ITU sister at Royal Liverpool University Hospital, said: "It's like living your worst nightmare. Honestly. We're coming into work, staff are seeing it first-hand what's happening as a result of what's going on outside the hospital.
'WORST NIGHTMARE'
"How ill people are becoming, very, very quickly deteriorating much more of a faster pace now.
"We're all doing the best that we can to keep everyone safe, but we need more people out there to do what they can also."
She added: "This isn't going away any time soon."
Britain's coronavirus death toll rose by 136 today, with the overall number of people killed with the virus now 43,429.
Cases soared by 15,650 in the past 24 hours, with 844 patients hospitalised.
On Wednesday, Liverpool was the first region in the UK to be placed into Tier 3 lockdown, the highest alert level.
It will joined tomorrow by Lancashire.
We're under a lot of pressure every day now. My biggest worry is we've not seen the peak of the second surge yet.
Under Liverpool's new rules, people are banned from mixing with other households, indoors or outdoors.
Businesses such as leisure centres and bars must close, but restaurants and schools can stay open.
Cases in Liverpool have surged from 94 in the week up to September 1 to the current level of 3,199 cases per week.
NHS figures released today showed deaths of patients with Covid-19 in Liverpool's city region rose by around a quarter in a week to 56.
It comes after 41 deaths in the previous seven days, as a frontline doctor spoke of the pressures faced by NHS staff in Liverpool.
Dr Richard Wenstone, a critical care consultant at Royal Liverpool University Hospital, said: "We're under a lot of pressure every day now. My biggest worry is we've not seen the peak of the second surge yet.
"Now, we're going into a winter and will be expecting the flu season to start as well and of course the winter tends to be a very busy time for hospitals anyway.
"But this is a very serious disease. It's here, it's not going to go away very quickly, it is killing people and it's going to continue to kill people until there's a vaccine – if we ever get a vaccine."
"There's no doubt that the really harsh lockdown in the spring made a difference.
"I don't think there's any doubt about that, so we know that if people stick to the rules we can cut down transmission."
Liverpool Women's Hospital will stop antenatal and postnatal visiting on hospital wards from midnight to cope with "the growing seriousness"of the Covid-19 spike.
The high infection rate has piled pressure on the Royal Liverpool, Broadgreen and Aintree hospitals.
Dr Tristan Cope, medical director of Liverpool University Hospitals NHS trust, warned the surge in coronavirus patients could have a "devastating" impact on treating patients with other illnesses.
On Wednesday, Councillor Paul Brant told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Our intensive, critical care beds are filling up very fast.
"The most recent figures I've seen suggest they are over 90 per cent full and our acute hospital trusts have occupancy levels of Covid-positive patients of over 250."
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