Inside a hospital unit fighting to save sickest Covid-19 patients

For those Covid-19 patients for whom ventilation is no longer enough to keep them alive there is one final hope – an ECMO machine. As a patient’s lungs fail  – the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine pumps the blood out of the body and reoxygenates it.

Our Health and Social Care Editor Victoria Macdonald has had exclusive access to one of just six ECMO units in the UK at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London where some of the country’s sickest Covid patients are fighting for their lives.