Two years after the first people with Covid-19 in the UK were transferred to the RVI, medics there have reflected on the pandemic - and one NHS expert has warned "policies can't be driven by a desire for it to be over".
On January 30, two people were moved to the RVI 's high-level isolation unit after it was discovered they had contracted Covid-19.
Rapidly, plans which had long-been rehearsed were triggered and medics began working in a situation they had hoped never to see.
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Now as 2022 begins, and Omicron remains prevalent in our communities, medics have looked back - and forwards - and spoken of how what we've learned through the pandemic should inform what we do next.
The woman in charge of preventing infectious disease at the Newcastle Hospital's NHS Trust looked back on those frantic early days - and explained where she thinks we stand with Covid-19 two years on.
Dr Lucia Pareja-Cebrian - the Trust's director of infection prevention and control - told ChronicleLive : "We know infections like this come in waves. We know that from flu and all the other similar infections and we knew we were expecting a big wave and a couple of smaller ones.
"But we didn't really expect that two years on we would still be looking at massive waves with critical patients.
"I have spent my life explaining to people how infections work. I remember teaching medical students that we were due a respiratory pandemic.
"And of course the Trust has a pandemic policy. We had procedures in place. Of course I would never have wished for one but we were in a position where we could prepare as much as we could.
"Of course it's one thing in theory and another in practice. We were preparing for the worst but hoping for the best."
Ashley Price - an infectious disease consultant a the RVI - spoke to Radio 4, adding: "It's when I was part of the team. He looked after those first few patients who came through to our units and I think at that time, we didn't know a lot about Coronavirus, but clearly [Covid] had struck in Western hospitals being pretty devastatingly.
"There was a sense of trepidation, but we were very well trained as one of the HMI units to look after patients with highly infected conditions and so wore very high level personal protective equipment - and the patients were all placed in isolation rooms with good ventilation.
"It was safe, but I think there was a lot of concern about what was going to happen."
The Trust's chief executive Dame Jackie Daniel also told the BBC: "We're used to dealing with patients with these levels of unusual infections - but I don't think anything could have really prepared us for what was to come."
Dame Jackie added that each wave of the pandemic had brought different challenges, with the early stages seeing the Trust "effectively repurpose a hospital" while the Omicron wave seeing more of a focus on coping with high levels of staff sickness.
"Every single stage in this pandemic has been different. It's been so different each and every time and we've had to rapidly respond."
Dr Pareja-Cebrian explained pandemic "rehearsals" had happened frequently before Covid-19 struck, and that throughout the pandemic the team in the Newcastle's hospitals had tried to be "at the forefront" of tackling the pandemic.
She added: "The speed of change we have seen has been quite extraordinary. Sometimes we have had to update policies even more than twice a week.
"We have been lucky in Newcastle that despite being such a big Trust we have been able to explain to everyone here exactly what was going to be expected and what was needed to keep people safe."
On January 25, there had been 986.9 cases per 100,000 people in Newcastle over the previous seven days. Though hospitalisations have fallen, and many are cases where Covid-19 is "incidental" and not the main cause of someone being in hospital - on that date there were still 91 Covid-positive patients in the city's hospitals, and four in mechanical ventilation beds.
Reflecting on the current state of the pandemic, as the Omicron wave begins to wane, Dr Pareja-Cebrian said that it was vital to use what we have learned about Covid-19 to inform how we react to it going forward. She said a sense of "optimistic caution" was important.
She said knowledge about Covid-19 treatments and how to protect against the virus had grown immeasurably.
"I think we have a better understanding of how we get Covid and what it is - and a better understanding about what I would call the different layers which protect us," she said.
"There are the layers of the masks, layers of protection from the vaccines and then from the treatments like monoclonal antibody treatment."
And she added it was vital that politicians reacted to the scientific evidence, continuing: "At the moment in the community we still have an awful lot of infection. Our politicians shouldn't be driven by a desire for the pandemic to be finished. We all want this to go away - no-one more than I - but we mustn't let that be the driver of what we do next.
"And I think we just need to be careful and clear about what 'living with Covid' means.
"If we were talking about living with lions now, we wouldn't be talking about running in front of them and just seeing what happens. We would see where they were and stay away from them.
"It's about looking at the level of risk and deciding what the response is.
"Right now there's a small risk, tomorrow could be different."
