THE cult of Cuomo, self-pitying KPMG staff and life on the frontline in A&E were the issues raised by columnists and contributors in the newspapers.

The Daily Mail

Piers Morgan said he had initially praised New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo and his lengthy daily pressers during the first wave of the pandemic,

But, he said, no one was more pleased with his performance than the Governor himself who brought a book out entitled ‘American Crisis: leadership lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic.’

“In an interview with New York magazine to promote the book, he even described his own briefings as ‘incredible’”, he said. “Cuomo was even awarded an international Emmy award in late November, ‘in recognition of his leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic and his masterful use of television to inform and calm people around the world.’”

Now, he said, it turns out Cuomo hid the shocking truth about New York State’s nursing-home death toll to protect his ‘self-acclaimed hero halo.’

“It’s time to stop giving Governor Cuomo awards and start holding him to proper account for the needless deaths of thousands of people.”

The Daily Express

Ross Clark said KPMG consultants are feeling a little hard done by after having their pay cut from an average of £640,000 to £572,000 and their boss, Bill Michael, telling them to stop complaining about the harsh economic reality of the pandemic.

“What he failed to appreciate, needless to say, is that we are all “victims” nowadays,” he said. “After a recording of the meeting went viral, Mr Michael was suspended as he was accused of bullying and damaging employees’ mental health.

“There is no excuse for workplace bullying or discrimination. But I don’t blame Bill Michael speaking to his whingeing, highly paid staff in the way he did - and I suspect a great number of people who have worked through the Covid crisis, or have been left jobless as a result of it, will agree.”

The Guardian

An anonymous junior doctor in A&E in a London hospital said a red phone rings to alert staff when a very sick patient is coming in.

In the past six weeks, it has been ringing a lot.

“Outside, four or five ambulances wait with patients needing litres of oxygen a minute,” they said. “As there is no space in the hospital, beds fill up in A&E, so we go out into the car park to assess patients isolating in the back of ambulances.”

They said a decrease in Covid in the second half of January had eased the pressure on the hospital but the wait to be seen can still be at least four hours long.

“The problem now isn’t just the chronic underfunding of emergency services,” they said. “The fact is, some hospitals don’t have space to cope with more Covid-19 patients.”

They remember waiting for a patient to arrive after hearing the red phone ring, they said

“He’d come into the hospital three days before with a mild cough, short of breath. His oxygen was low, but not low enough. Now he was back.”

They remember making internal phone calls last year to alert relatives in other wards about a loved one’s death in A&E.

“Now I feel a selfish relief that it won’t be me. Another doctor will have to have that conversation; the red phone is already ringing again.”