My night in A&E left me worried about the NHS’s coronavirus response

I wish I shared the Prime Minister’s confidence about the ability of the NHS to cope with coronavirus. ‘I have no doubt that with the help of the NHS and its incomparable staff, this country will get through it – and beat it,’ he said on Sunday. Not if my experience in A&E last week is anything to go by.

I wasn’t keen to visit A&E in the midst of the current crisis, obviously, and had it been my own health I was worried about I would have stayed in bed. But it was Sasha’s, my 16-year-old daughter. She was pushed down some stairs at a party (not deliberately) and one of her fake fingernails got bent back, ripping her actual nail off its nail bed. She was complaining about the pain and it looked infected so I called 111 and asked what to do. Answer: take her to A&E. So off we went to Chelsea and Westminster.