Escalation to intensive care for the older patient. An exploratory qualitative study of patients aged 65 years and older and their next of kin during the COVID-19 pandemic: the ESCALATE study.

"Declaration of Conflicts of Interest None. Declaration of Sources of Funding This work was supported by the Charing Cross Hospital ICU charity; infrastructure support for this research was provided by the NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre. For the purpose of Open Access, the authors have applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission. The author Dr D.B.A. is affiliated with the Department of Health and Social Care, Centre for Antimicrobial Optimization at Imperial College, London. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National Health Service, NIHR or Department of Health. The funders of the study had no role in design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis and interpretation of the data; and preparation, review or approval of the manuscript, or the decision to submit for publication."

"Declaration of Sources of Funding This work was supported by the Charing Cross Hospital ICU charity; infrastructure support for this research was provided by the NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre. For the purpose of Open Access, the authors have applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission. The author Dr D.B.A. is affiliated with the Department of Health and Social Care, Centre for Antimicrobial Optimization at Imperial College, London. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National Health Service, NIHR or Department of Health. The funders of the study had no role in design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis and interpretation of the data; and preparation, review or approval of the manuscript, or the decision to submit for publication."