Respiratory failure and non-invasive respiratory support during the covid-19 pandemic: an update for re-deployed hospital doctors and primary care physicians.

### What you need to know In response to the covid-19 pandemic, many health systems attempted to rapidly reorganise their healthcare workforce in the first half of 2020, including redeployment of doctors from primary care and non-frontline specialties to acute care wards.1 Preparedness for potential future redeployment remains essential given the risk of further waves of covid-19 as society negotiates repeated cycles of lockdown and reopening. Most people who become seriously unwell with covid-19 have an acute respiratory illness,234 and about 14% will require non-invasive respiratory support.2 In addition to shifting into acute care settings in the short term, primary care clinicians will also be caring for patients (or their loved ones) recovering from potentially traumatic experiences of respiratory illness. This article updates primary care and non-respiratory or intensivist specialist doctors on the recognition and non-invasive management of acute respiratory failure and will aid general practitioners in the subsequent outpatient support of patients during their recovery. ### Case scenario A 50 year old man has been self isolating for eight days with fever and a cough. He was brought to the emergency department by ambulance after becoming increasingly breathless over the past two days. He can speak complete sentences but has an elevated respiratory rate of 24 breaths per minute (normal …