Staff at St George's Hospital say they are 'overwhelmed' and feel 'demoralised' as they battle the second wave of the pandemic.

Nurses and consultants at the hospital in Tooting admitted that the pandemic has taken it's toll, with some being unable to sleep and crying at the end of their shifts.

Before Boris Johnson announced England's new national lockdown, the BBC was given exclusive access to see how the staff were coping with Covid-19.

Senior nurse Hannah Packham told the BBC that she cries when she get's home "quite a lot at the moment."

She said: "We're suffering with sleep problems, I think a lot of nurses and doctors are suffering at the moment as well.

"You just have to relax on your days off as best you can, ready, prepping yourself to come back again, is what I would say."

Jane Evans, a consultant in acute medicine, said: "There were many staff back in March who said: 'I could never do this again'.

"And then here we are, facing what seems at the moment to be a worse surge of sort of patients with Covid and you see people are very tired, very stressed.

"And that’s a real worry to us because we just do have to keep going because we have to be here for the patients.

"But I do worry, you know, about the scars that will leave some of our staff with."

A senior staff nurse, Chloe Walker, said she had "one of the worst shifts of my entire life."

"I’m looking after many more sick patients than I’d normally look after. It’s just overwhelming, the whole situation.

Your Local Guardian: Chloe Walker - credit to BBCChloe Walker - credit to BBC

Chloe Walker - BBC

"You see the videos of the anti-Covid people, and you just think to yourself, what am I even doing?

"It demoralises me completely, I’ve never felt so demoralised in my life."

Dr Dominic Spray spoke of his frustration at people who flout restrictions, he said: "You see the nurses that are crying after their 12-hour shift and going home exhausted and drained.

"And then having to pick themselves up to come back in again the next morning. That's when it hits home."

He added that his staff have to 'bite their lips' when they hear that people have gone against government guidelines.

"They have to bite their lips because you may not see the effects of it when you're doing that, but we see the effects of it,' he said.

"We have people in their 40s, their 30s, their 20s on our intensive care unit, dying of Covid. We are having to think about whether we do cancer surgery, we're having to postpone cancer surgery because of the number of Covid patients we have in.

"So even if you don't think you are doing any harm by bending the rules a little, you are. It has a knock-on effect, and we are seeing the knock-off effect here."