London based Mullingar nurse among first locals to get vaccine

A nurse living and working in London is one of the first Westmeath people to receive the Pfizer BioNtech vaccine.

Liam Murray, originally from Woodlands in Mullingar, received the ground-breaking jab on St Stephen’s Day and is urging everyone to avail of it once it becomes available to them.

Liam received the vaccine at his workplace, Northwick Park Hospital in north London, one of the hardest hit hospitals in terms of coronavirus during the first outbreak last March.

Despite tripling the number of intensive care beds and converting other wards into coronavirus units, Northwick Park had one of the highest Covid death rates in the UK.

“I didn’t have to think twice about getting it [the vaccine]. It is the same as getting a flu vaccine, the benefits certainly outweigh the risk,” says the palliative care nurse, whose role dramatically changed at the onset of the pandemic.

Son of Rose and the late Richard Murray, Liam moved to London in 2000 to do his nurse training. Now living in Uxbridge with his wife Elizabeth and their three children, Liam’s main role is end-of-life care.

Instead of meeting face-to-face with the families of loved ones, he was having to conduct difficult conversations over the phone as visiting restrictions were introduced. And because of the multitude of people presenting with Covid-19, and their rapid deterioration, he had to advise and support other medical staff in end-of-life care.

“There were nurses who would never have seen a dead patient before,” said Liam. “The nursing occupation in general is to make people better and send them home again. Suddenly, there was a massive change in exposure to the dying patient, and people were witnessing patients dying on a daily basis.

“It required a lot of psychological support for both the families of the patients and the staff,” he says.

Liam was also advising on triaging patients with Covid-19 symptoms, but in some cases the symptoms came on so quickly that the patient died before appropriate management could be taken.

Now as the new, reportedly more contagious, strain of the virus sweeps Britain, the prime minister Boris Johnson has introduced a lockdown under which schools will remain closed until January 18.

Liam, meanwhile, is awaiting his second dose of the vaccine on January 16.

“While the vaccine gives me peace of mind, it doesn’t mean that I don’t need to wear a mask any more. I’ll still be doing the exact same as I have been doing,” he said.

“It’s just increasing my overall protection from the virus. Everything and anything I can do to protect myself and my family is worth doing,” he said.

“My wife’s parents live 10 minutes away from us and we haven’t set foot in their house since March. We are not under any illusions that this is going to be a grand fix,” Liam said.

He argues, however, that social media has a lot to answer for.

“I saw someone the other day commenting that the whole thing was a massive conspiracy and that it was the government’s way of trying to reduce population numbers. I can’t even entertain that, if they had to see what I saw – but maybe that’s their way of managing this, of coping.

“All we can do is watch and wait and hope for the best. You see the governments on both sides introducing guidelines but unfortunately, they’re not being followed as strictly as they should be.

“If people had seen the horror of what I’d witnessed…”

Remembering the early days of the pandemic, Liam said Northwick Park was one of the first receiving hospitals for Covid-19 patients, in March.

“Because the area we’re in is quite an ethnically diverse area, there would have been a lot of household mixing, because generations of families live in the same household. Grandchildren were going out to work and potentially bringing back the virus with them.

“Because of that we were one of the main receivers for Covid, and we had one of the highest death rates.”

He, like many of his colleagues, contracted the virus.

“I got a very mild dose so thankfully I didn’t require hospitalisation. I got a cough and had a temperature for two or three days, and was lethargic for a few weeks afterward. I still had to self-isolate for 14 days up in the bedroom, while my wife Elizabeth had to look after our three children Noah (8), Samuel (6) and Finn (2), which was hard, as you can imagine.”

Liam has not been home to see his family in Mullingar since January 2020.

“Usually, I’d get home two or three times a year, so it’s been an emotional time for us all, but I’ve got quite a large family at home who are very good at supporting family and supporting my mam, and that is a blessing.

Liam believes it will be summer before the vaccine is rolled out for everyone in the community in the UK.

“Until then, I would encourage everyone to follow the guidelines no matter what side of the water you’re on, and get vaccinated as soon as you can. This virus shows no favouritism.”