‘She died alone and her last memories were of sheer terror’: Nurse’s anti-vaxxer mother, 57, dies of Covid at hospital where her daughter works on vaccine rollout
- Nurse Amy Crosby, 34, paid tribute to her mother who died from Covid this week
- On Twitter, she said her mother didn’t believe in the virus or trust the vaccines
- Geraldine Maunt, 57, died at the James Cook Hospital, Middlesbrough
- Was the same hospital Amy has been working at on the vaccine rollout
A nurse has shared her heartbreak after her Covid-denying mother died from the virus at the same hospital that she had been working at.
34-year-old Amy Crosby said she has been working at the James Cook Hospital in Middlesbrough, helping to continue the vaccine drive.
And she took to Twitter on Wednesday to share the devastating news that her mother, Geraldine Mount, 57, who did not believe Covid-19 was real, had died at the same hospital.
34-year-old nurse Amy Crosby (right) has shared her heartbreak after her Covid-denying mother died from the virus at the same hospital that she had been working at
Amy shared a collage of photos of herself with her mother alongside a written statement
Amy shared a collage of photos of herself with her mother alongside a written statement, which read: ‘This is my Mam – Geraldine, a 57-year-old with no pre-existing medical conditions.
‘We have had a strained relationship over the last 18 months and some of this was due to her beliefs that Covid-19 isn’t real and that vaccines are dangerous.
‘Today in hospital, she died of complications caused by Covid. She’s spent the last month of her life without any family around her and her last memories were of sheer terror at having to be intubated and not knowing if she would wake up.
‘As a nurse whose been working on the Covid vaccine rollout at the same hospital she died at today, I can’t tell you how painful this preventable loss is for our family.
She took to Twitter on Wednesday to share the devastating news that her mother, Geraldine Mount, 57, (right) who did not believe Covid-19 was real, had died at the same hospital
Amy’s heart-breaking statement
‘This is my Mam – Geraldine, a 57-year-old with no pre-existing medical conditions.
‘We have had a strained relationship over the last 18 months and some of this was due to her beliefs that Covid-19 isn’t real and that vaccines are dangerous.
‘Today in hospital, she died of complications caused by Covid. She’s spent the last month of her life without any family around her and her last memories were of sheer terror at having to be intubated and not knowing if she would wake up.
‘As a nurse whose been working on the Covid vaccine rollout at the same hospital she died at today, I can’t tell you how painful this preventable loss is for our family.
‘If any good can come from this, it is that hopefully in sharing her story and our pain, even just one person with these ludicrous dangerous beliefs can rethink, reconsider sharing this warped “evidence” and get the vaccine to prevent their families having to go through what we are now.
‘I will be eternally thankful for the staff of James Cook Hospital who battled so desperately to save her. You are all heroes.
‘Goodnight Mam, I love you and remember the happier times. I hope you are at peace now.’
‘If any good can come from this, it is that hopefully in sharing her story and our pain, even just one person with these ludicrous dangerous beliefs can rethink, reconsider sharing this warped “evidence” and get the vaccine to prevent their families having to go through what we are now.
‘I will be eternally thankful for the staff of James Cook Hospital who battled so desperately to save her. You are all heroes.
‘Goodnight Mam, I love you and remember the happier times. I hope you are at peace now.’
MailOnline has approached Amy Crosby for further comment.
Britain’s coronavirus outbreak continued to grow yesterday as daily infections, deaths and hospital admissions all increased and the R rate jumped to potentially above one.
The Department of Health’s usual update showed there were 37,314 infections over the past 24 hours, marking a 14.1 per cent rise on the figure last week. The country is now averaging more than 31,000 cases per day.
There were also another 114 Covid deaths registered within 28 days of a positive test, 14 per cent more than the number last Friday.
Latest hospital data shows there were 858 admissions for the virus across the country on August 16, another 14.4 per cent rise week-on-week.
Professor Chris Whitty yesterday urged Britons not to delay getting the Covid vaccine, saying there are some ‘very sick’ young adults in hospital with the virus. He said he had spent four weeks working on a Covid ward and said he ‘regret delaying’ their vaccination.
It came as Public Health England figures showed almost three-quarters of under-50s hospitalised by the virus had not been vaccinated.
UK’s Covid outbreak grows again: Infections, deaths and hospital admissions all climb 14% in a week — as SAGE warns R rate could now be above 1
By Luke Andrews, Health Reporter for MailOnline
Britain’s coronavirus outbreak continued to grow today as daily infections, deaths and hospital admissions all increased and the R rate jumped to potentially above one.
The Department of Health’s usual update showed there were 37,314 infections over the past 24 hours, marking a 14.1 per cent rise on the figure last week. The country is now averaging more than 31,000 cases per day.
There were also another 114 Covid deaths registered within 28 days of a positive test, 14 per cent more than the number last Friday.
Latest hospital data shows there were 858 admissions for the virus across the country on August 16, another 14.4 per cent rise week-on-week.
Professor Chris Whitty today urged Britons not to delay getting the Covid vaccine, saying there are some ‘very sick’ young adults in hospital with the virus. He said he had spent four weeks working on a Covid ward andsaid he ‘regret delaying’ their vaccination.
It came as Public Health England figures showed almost three-quarters of under-50s hospitalised by the virus had not been vaccinated.
Meanwhile, SAGE today estimated the R rate has risen to between 0.9 and 1.2, up from a range of 0.8 and 1.0 last week. The R – or reproduction – rate represents the average number of people each Covid patient will infect and keeping it below one is critical for infections to fall.
There are growing fears that Britain’s stubbornly high case number could turn into a deadly outbreak this winter when the cold weather hits and schools go back.
In one positive sign, the Office for National Statistics found England’s Covid cases fell very slightly last week (4 per cent) but it noted that the drop-off could be down to the school holidays.
The ONS estimated that 698,100 people were infected with the virus on any given day in the week to August 14 — or one in 80 people — compared to 726,700 in the week prior.
The figure is based on random swabbing of more than 100,000 Britons, which helps account for asymptomatic cases who would not have come forward for a test.
The reason under-50s make up a larger proportion of the cases among unvaccinated and one dose admissions is because they are more likely to not have had a jab. The data from Public Health England shows that most admissions are still in the unvaccinated (shown middle) of which people under-50 make up the vast majority of cases. The same is true about admissions among people who’ve had a single dose (right). However it is more balanced in people who have been fully vaccinated
Office for National Statistics figures suggested Covid cases fell by four per cent in England last week after estimating 698,100 people were infected with the virus
But No10’s top scientists said the R rate had risen compared to 0.8 to 1.0 the previous week, and was now between 0.9 and 1.2. This means every ten people who catch the virus are thought to be passing it on to up to 12 others. The R rate is a lagging indicator, and can only reflect the situation on the ground up to two weeks ago.
Separate figures from No10’s top scientists published today estimated the R rate has risen to between 0.9 and 1.2, up from a range of 0.8 and 1.0 last week. The R – or reproduction – rate represents the average number of people each Covid patient will infect and keeping it below one is critical for infections to fall
A Covid antibody cocktail drug used to treat former US President Donald Trump has been approved for UK patients.
Britain’s medical regulator gave Ronapreve the green light after finding it could prevent infection and treat patients who were already sick.
Trials showed that among patients with at least one risk factor for severe Covid, it slashed their risk of death or hospitalisation by 70 per cent.
A separate study found it dramatically reduced the risk of catching Covid, but protection only lasts for a month. Health officials will now decide who should get the drug.
The drug is a combination of two cloned antibodies, casirivimab and imdevimab (pictured)
However, at a cost of £2,000 per patient, it is unlikely to be rolled out widely as a preventative. Experts today called for it to be targeted at the most vulnerable Britons.
The approved treatment is the first developed specifically to target Covid, after steroids and anti-inflammatories were repurposed to treat the virus.
Boris Johnson said the drug will be an ‘important weapon in fighting Covid, particularly for those who are immunocompromised’.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid said it would be rolled out on the NHS ‘as soon as possible’.
The treatment is not a substitute for vaccination because the protection against Covid it sparks only lasts for up to four weeks, far less time than that from jabs.
The drug — which uses two different man-made antibodies to fight the virus — is administered by injection or intravenously. It is made by US biotech firm Regeneron and Swiss company Roche.
An R of 1.2 suggests every ten people who are infected may now be passing on the virus to twelve others. The R is known to lag up to three weeks due to the way it is calculated, which means it may not reflect the current situation.
Today’s ONS report found only three regions — East Midlands, West Midlands and North East — saw their infections fall in the week to August 14.
The East of England was estimated to have seen its Covid cases rise last week, while they levelled off in London and the South East. Only three regions — East Midlands, West Midlands and North East.
Infections rose in middle-aged adults in the latest week but fell in teenagers and children as a result of schools closing. Rates were also down in young adults and over-70s.
Wales was the only nation to see its outbreak grow in the latest week to one in 130 people infected with the virus, while Northern Ireland saw its cases level off to one in 150 people. Both Scotland and England saw their cases fall.
Across England it suggested Yorkshire and the Humber had the highest proportion of people infected with the virus, or around one in 60 (89,600 estimated cases).
It was followed by the North West where one in 60 were thought to be infected (117,700), and the East of England at one in 70 (85,900) and London also at one in 70 (123,700).
The West Midlands was estimated to have the smallest outbreak with one in 150 residents having Covid (38,900), behind the South East at one in 100 (85,900) and the South West at one in 95 (58,300).
When modelling the level of Covid infections among different age groups, the ONS said rates have increased for people aged between 35 to 49 years old.
But they had decreased for those in school years seven to 11, for 25 to 34-year-olds and for people aged 70 and over.
Britain is now gearing up to dish out Covid booster jabs at the start of September, in hopes of keeping immunity high in the face of future flare-ups this autumn and winter.
One SAGE expert today warned the high case numbers were ‘very worrying’ and warned ‘we just don’t really know what’s going to happen’ in the coming months.
And daily figures revealed a further 55,979 first doses were dished out across the UK, while 175,059 people received their second jab.
Some 47.5million Brits aged over 16 have now had their first dose (87.4 per cent), while 41.3million (76 per cent) are fully immunised.
But nearly three million young adults have not had a first dose, according to figures published earlier this week by the UK’s four health agencies.
There has been a concerted effort to get as many people vaccinated as possible, with 16 and 17-year-olds getting letters and text reminders this week inviting them for a jab.
Chris Whitty warns of ‘very sick’ young patients in hospital with Covid in plea for people to get jabs
Professor Chris Whitty has urged Britons not to delay getting the Covid vaccine, saying there are some ‘very sick’ young adults in hospital with the virus.
England’s chief medical officer — who has spent four weeks working on a Covid ward — said it was ‘stark’ that the majority of Covid patients have not had their jabs, and told how many ‘regret delaying’ their inoculation.
Almost three-quarters of under-50s hospitalised with Covid have not been vaccinated, according to official figures from Public Health England.
Professor Whitty said: ‘The great majority of adults have been vaccinated.
‘Four weeks working on a Covid ward makes stark the reality that the majority of our hospitalised Covid patients are unvaccinated and regret delaying. Some are very sick including young adults.
‘Please don’t delay your vaccine.’
It came as Britain today recorded another 37,314 Covid cases — up by 14 per cent in seven days and the fifth day in a row that infections have risen week-on-week.
Hospitalisations also ticked upwards by 14 per cent in a week after 858 admissions were recorded on August 16, the latest available, and deaths rose by a tenth in seven days to 114.
PHE data published today showed of the 4,112 under-50s hospitalised with the Indian ‘Delta’ variant — which is behind almost every Covid case in the UK — as many as 3,044 (74 per cent) had not been inoculated.
It comes as England’s chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty today urged Britons not to delay getting the Covid vaccine, saying there are some ‘very sick’ young adults in hospital with the virus.
Professor Whitty — who has spent four weeks working on a Covid ward — said it was ‘stark’ that the majority of Covid patients have not had their jabs and told how many ‘regret delaying’ their inoculation.
Professor Whitty said: ‘The great majority of adults have been vaccinated.
‘Four weeks working on a Covid ward makes stark the reality that the majority of our hospitalised Covid patients are unvaccinated and regret delaying. Some are very sick including young adults.
‘Please don’t delay your vaccine.’
The US yesterday confirmed all over-18s would be eligible for top-up doses, and Israel — which is currently being battered by a third wave — is already offering over-60s a third jab. There are fears that the vaccines lose potency over time, which some experts have said is part of the reason why Israel is being battered currently.
But No10’s top advisers — who met yesterday to discuss the controversial topic — have yet to make a final decision on who should get the jabs.
Mr Javid today insisted the UK was going to have a programme and it will focus on vulnerable people and ‘start sometime in September’.
That would seem to rule out a mass booster programme, which was originally slated to include more than 30million Britons.
One member of the expert panel the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) told The Guardian: ‘The jury is still very much out on what happens.’ Another today hinted the programme would only be open to the most vulnerable adults, and said the inoculation drive could still be expanded to all over-12s.
It comes as the UK approves a Covid antibody cocktail drug used to treat former US president Donald Trump for its patients.
Britain’s medical regulator gave Ronapreve the green light after finding it could prevent infection and treat patients who were already sick.
The East of England was estimated to have seen its Covid cases rise last week, while they levelled off in London and the South East. Only three regions — East Midlands, West Midlands and North East — saw their infections fall
Adults aged 35 to 49 years old saw their Covid infection rate rise in the latest week, estimates suggested, but among school-age children, 25 to 34-year-olds and the over-70s it fell compared to the previous seven-day spell
Wales was the only nation to see its outbreak grow in the latest week. Cases levelled off in Northern Ireland, and decreased in England and Scotland
Trials showed that among patients with at least one risk factor for severe Covid, it slashed their risk of death or hospitalisation by 70 per cent.
A separate study found it dramatically reduced the risk of catching Covid, but protection only lasts for a month. Health officials will now decide who should get the drug.
However, at a cost of £2,000 per patient, it is unlikely to be rolled out widely as a preventative. Experts today called for it to be targeted at the most vulnerable Britons.
The approved treatment is the first developed specifically to target Covid, after steroids and anti-inflammatories were repurposed to treat the virus.
Boris Johnson said the drug will be an ‘important weapon in fighting Covid, particularly for those who are immunocompromised’.
Deadly delusion of the 90 per cent: In a furious and haunting dispatch an intensive care doctor reveals the shocking proportion of Covid patients in his ward on ventilators who are vaccine refuseniks
By An Anonymous Senior Intensive Care Consultant for the Daily Mail
The UK vaccine rollout has been hugely successful with more than three-quarters of adults (75.7 per cent) having now received two jabs.
However, the highly infectious Delta variant of the Covid virus is spreading — some 37,314 new cases were reported yesterday — and patients are still falling seriously ill and being admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) across the country.
Sadly, some of them will die. Even more sadly, many of those deaths are entirely avoidable. Why? Because the vast majority of Covid patients presenting on ICU wards now are unvaccinated.
Here, a senior intensive care consultant at a leading teaching hospital gives a first-hand account of the pity and frustration he and his staff feel as they battle to save lives — and their anger with anti-vaxxers and Covid deniers whose influence has been a factor in so many of these unnecessary deaths.
For me and my staff, it is yet another late night in ICU. I am standing in scrubs and full PPE, surveying the cramped 22-bed ward, sealed off from the rest of the hospital. It is eerily quiet, just the low hum of ventilators and the bleeps of the monitors.
Ten of the beds are occupied by Covid victims — each bed adjacent to a ventilator pumping oxygen into the heavily-sedated patients. Clinical staff are constantly checking the screens for readouts on heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen levels and a host of other data.
All of it is electronically captured and interpreted by the dedicated bedside nurse and handful of trainee doctors who are led by a consultant — in this case me.
I feel sorry for the men and women lying here, plugged in to the machines.
I don’t know many of them personally — by the time they arrive, it’s usually too late for a conversation — but it’s impossible not to feel compassion for those on the brink of death.
Yet the depressing truth is that most of these desperately ill patients should not be here at all.
During the first wave of the virus, I reckon we lost about 20 out of 74 Covid patients and in the second wave, 38 patients out of 96.
Now we are in the third wave, it is different. We have the vaccines, thank goodness, and most UK adults have been double-jabbed.
I feel sorry for the men and women lying here, plugged in to the machines. I don’t know many of them personally — by the time they arrive, it’s usually too late for a conversation — but it’s impossible not to feel compassion for those on the brink of death. A stock image is used above [File photo]
The NHS vaccine programme has dramatically weakened the link between Covid and death — some 100,000 lives have been saved by the jab, according to the latest figures. And, as reflected in the data, we are seeing a much lower level of hospitalisations nationally.
But the patients here and in other ICUs around the country are still dying from Covid — sometimes horrible deaths — because, all too often, they have refused the vaccine.
Looking at their medical notes I know that all the Covid patients currently on the unit were offered the jab but that 90 per cent of those on ventilators here are unvaccinated. I understand this figure is roughly the same at most other units.
It is a chilling statistic and one that makes me absolutely furious. Not with the patients — my heart goes out to them for what they and their families are going through. The havoc wreaked on the lungs by Covid and the desperate sense of not being able to breathe is not something I would wish anyone to endure.
No, my quarrel is with those who perpetuate the myths that the virus does not exist or that Covid vaccines are dangerous. Their false claims are killing people.
One of my vaccine-refusenik patients was so convinced that the Covid pandemic was a ‘conspiracy’ that he was still insisting loudly that ‘Covid doesn’t exist’ even as — struggling to breathe — he was being sedated prior to being placed on a ventilator.
Unfortunately, he didn’t make it — and all of us who witnessed his avoidable death felt moved by the sheer waste of that life.
Two of the nurses who were with him in his last desperate moments were in tears. He had a wife and two young children: inevitably they couldn’t be with him when he died.
The misinformation put forward by the Covid-deniers, the conspiracy theorists, the anti-vaxxers and other attention-seeking fruitcakes — mainly via social media — is having a catastrophic effect. It is undermining the monumental efforts of the NHS and of its dedicated staff to cope with the most significant public health emergency of modern times.
Worryingly, we are also seeing a big rise in the number of young people admitted to hospital for high oxygen therapy. Some believe that their youth should be enough to protect them from the worst ravages of the virus but others have swallowed the propaganda and rejected the offer of vaccination.
Sadly, we in the NHS have not yet found an effective way of countering the fake and downright dangerous news that has been spilling out about the pandemic and the vaccines. And, as a result, we are seeing patients who refuse to accept that Covid exists or that the vaccines are safe and effective being stretchered daily into this hospital.
By the time they come up to ICU, most are at death’s door.
Take Pete, one of my patients: he was knocking on that door very loudly when he was admitted to ICU in July. A 50-year-old mechanical engineer, he had called an ambulance when his breathlessness got too much. He was admitted to a general ward and then, as he deteriorated, he was transferred up to us.
In this country, too, we are faced with deranged claims about the pandemic and the jabs by some well-known conspiracy theorists. They include Covid deniers such as Piers Corbyn (left, brother of Jeremy Corbyn), who believe that governments are trying to impose a new world order through lockdown which will include injecting people with microchips. Former Green Party activist David Icke (who is the self-proclaimed ‘Son of the Godhead’ and believes the Queen is a lizard) is also among them, as is former nurse Kate Shemirani (right). At a Trafalgar Square protest recently, she suggested that NHS staff who administered the vaccine were like doctors and nurses who colluded with the Nazis
At all costs, we wanted to avoid having to put him on the ventilator, which would have made him more vulnerable to secondary infections. We tried blowing high-flow oxygen up his nose; we fitted him with a tight face mask pressurising the oxygen delivered to his lungs — which is torture when you are experiencing extreme ‘air hunger’ because of Covid — all to no avail.
To give you some idea of how much oxygen Pete was needing, imagine you were scuba diving with a tank of oxygen that would allow you to stay underwater for 40 hours. Pete would go through that in 15 minutes.
He was a big bloke — yes, overweight but also strong. When he was admitted to ICU we had a chat –—brief because he could barely breathe, let alone speak — and that’s when he told me refusing the vaccine was the ‘worst decision of my life’.
Later I learned that his mates, work colleagues, people he drank with down the pub, had seeded doubt in his mind about its safety. Pete lived alone and there were no other voices to tell him differently.
‘Worst…decis…ion…of…my…life,’ he wheezed again just before we put him off to sleep prior to ventilation. He was aware this could be the last conscious moment in his life. I knew that he was terrified but the effort of breathing had taken so much out of him he knew he couldn’t go on.
Most of the time it doesn’t take a lot of energy to breathe. With lung failure, every drop of energy you have is going into the physical struggle of getting oxygen to your lungs —there’s none left over for anything else. Your brain shuts down and eventually you just stop. We had to take over his breathing before we got close to that stage.
We monitored Pete over the next few days. He was going downhill fast and also battling the spiral of physical collapse and its consequences: dialysis, numerous drugs and drips, and the daily horrors of a procedure known as ‘proning’ — turning him over onto his stomach to improve the amount of oxygen getting into his blood.
Pete was 20 st so for us this was really hard work: it needed a team of seven people. What if a tube was accidentally pulled out? It could easily happen — he might be dead before we could get it back in.
And all the wires to which he was attached, and the intravenous lines delivering carefully calculated doses of drugs at certain times… some of which could not be stopped under any circumstance.
We had to be extraordinarily careful. Everyone had to know exactly what their job was and how it would be done.
I spent a lot of time thinking about Pete and where his anti-vaxxer fears had come from. I got the impression that he and his mates believed that the vaccines were part of a sinister Government conspiracy.
The politicians — including the Prime Minister and the then health secretary Matt Hancock — wanted to alter their DNA, to destroy their fertility and insert microchips into their body via the vaccine to monitor their activities. Of all this, Pete had been absolutely convinced. What he couldn’t explain was the motive. Why should the British state be so ruthless and cruel to its own citizens?
Another of my patients, James, who was in his 50s, educated and intelligent, suffered a collapsed lung — caused by his desperate struggle to breathe — shortly after he arrived in ICU.
He had tested positive for Covid but didn’t ‘believe’ in the virus. I told him we needed to put in a chest drain to prevent him getting worse.
The misinformation put forward by the Covid-deniers, the conspiracy theorists, the anti-vaxxers and other attention-seeking fruitcakes — mainly via social media — is having a catastrophic effect
He TOLD me he didn’t have Covid, because it didn’t exist. This was despite the fact that other family members — including his brother who was also in hospital — were infected as well.
The pandemic and the virus were all a figment of the media’s imagination, he insisted, part of a global conspiracy to repress the rights of individuals like him.
And because Covid didn’t exist, he wouldn’t agree to a chest drain. Tired and fractious after a busy week, I’m ashamed to say that I got up, told him that I didn’t have time for this and made to walk away. ‘No, no! Doctor!’ He motioned me back with his hand. ‘OK, OK,’ he said.
We treated him with the best we could offer — but he died a fortnight later.
I felt sad about that and when I think about him, I do not see a bombastic fool, refusing to face the facts. I see a desperately frightened man who knew what horrors and pain he’d face further down the line but who was clinging to some hopeless positivity that the Covid-19 virus was an illusion.
Derek, who was in his 80s, was also admitted to my unit. He’d refused the vaccine because he wanted to ‘wait and see’ if it was safe before he had it.
Given his age and vulnerability he must have been one of the first people offered it. I told him — at his age — it would have been best for him to take the risk.
Even if the vaccines are not 100 per cent effective, there is no question that they’ve given people of Derek’s age a second chance and kept them out of intensive care. Astonishingly, he survived.
These are just a few individuals I have encountered in recent months who said no to vaccination and paid the price.
As I have said, I don’t blame them but the handful of very vocal influencers who have exploited the internet to get their twisted messages across, claiming that it is all about ‘individual freedom’. But what value is ‘freedom’ if millions face endless lockdowns to control the virus? Look at Australia and New Zealand — both nations that have been slow to roll out a vaccine programme.
And what ‘freedom’ do those hooked up to ventilators have as they fight for life?
In the United States, the so-called ‘Disinformation Dozen’ — 12 key ‘influencers’ — are reportedly behind around two-thirds of the anti-vaxxer output online.
And in this country, too, we are faced with deranged claims about the pandemic and the jabs by some well-known conspiracy theorists.
They include Covid deniers such as Piers Corbyn (brother of Jeremy Corbyn), who believe that governments are trying to impose a new world order through lockdown which will include injecting people with microchips. Former Green Party activist David Icke (who is the self-proclaimed ‘Son of the Godhead’ and believes the Queen is a lizard) is also among them, as is former nurse Kate Shemirani.
At a Trafalgar Square protest recently, she suggested that NHS staff who administered the vaccine were like doctors and nurses who colluded with the Nazis. Together they peddle their crackpot claims via protest marches and demonstrations on hospital premises.
Reckless, self-serving antics like these leave me furious when I look at my exhausted and dedicated staff, at the patients clinging on to life and the resources invested in trying to keep them alive.
It’s worth pointing out prior to December 2020, around 850 healthcare workers died from Covid in the UK. I know many of those I work with thought nothing of risking their own lives to save others.
Eventually, there will be a Covid inquiry and uncomfortable truths may emerge for politicians, scientists and, yes, the NHS, too.
But I also feel that those who actively and malignly sought to discredit the vaccine and to destroy trust in NHS staff should be held to account — in court if possible.
To end on a happier note, let me update you on my patient Pete. We got him off the ventilator and he’s back on a general ward. He’s not properly aware of where he is, is too weak to stand but can just about sit on the side of the bed.
For him, the long slow stagger back to — hopefully — full health and normality has only just begun. He remembers little of what has happened to him in the last couple of months. Perhaps he’s even forgotten that refusing the vaccine was the worst decision of his life.
The writer is Director of Intensive Care at a major teaching hospital. All names have been changed to protect patients’ anonymity.
NOT Too Sexy for Covid… Right Said Fred singer and anti-vaxxer Richard Fairbrass tests positive for coronavirus – but says he STILL won’t get jabbed
By Stuart Pink for MailOnline
Right Said Fred frontman and anti-vaxxer Richard Fairbrass has contracted Covid-19 – but still has no intention of having the jab.
The I’m Too Sexy singer, 67, fell ill last Saturday and was taken by ambulance to Park Hospital in Slough, Berkshire, needing oxygen because he was struggling to breathe.
After spending four nights under the watchful eye of doctors, he is now recovering at home. His Covid battle comes six months after he branded the vaccine a ‘scam’.
Speaking exclusively to MailOnline outside his home in Windsor, Richard said: ‘I’ve had a bit of Covid, it wasn’t too bad. I was a little breathless, I felt very tired.
Right Said Fred brothers Fred Fairbrass and Richard Fairbrass at an anti-lockdown demonstration in Trafalgar Square in London on September 26, 2020
Richard Fairbrass of Right Said Fred performs on stage in Vienna in October 2016
‘But full credit to the NHS, they were non-judgemental and very open to how you wanted to be treated – and my treatment was just keeping my oxygen levels up for a week.’
But despite contracting the killer bug, Richard insists he will still not have the vaccine.
Chris Whitty warns of ‘very sick’ Covid patients as he urges people to get a jab
England’s chief medical officer has urged people not to delay getting their Covid-19 vaccine, saying there are some ‘very sick’ young adults in hospital with the virus.
Professor Chris Whitty branded it ‘stark’ that the majority of Covid patients have not had a jab. He said he had spent four weeks working on a Covid ward and told how many ‘regret delaying’ their vaccination.
His comments came as new figures showed that 55 per cent people in hospital with the Delta variant – which is dominant in the UK – have not been jabbed.
The data from Public Health England (PHE) also shows that 74 per cent of people under 50 in hospital with the variant had not been vaccinated.
Almost two thirds of people in the same age group who died in England with the Delta variant were not vaccinated against the virus, the figures show.
The UK’s vaccine programme has so far seen around three-quarters of adults in the UK double-jabbed. But nearly three million young adults have not had a first dose, according to figures published earlier this week by the four health agencies.
There has been a concerted effort to get as many people vaccinated as possible, with 16 and 17-year-olds getting letters and text reminders this week inviting them for a jab.
The PHE data, published on Friday, showed there were 1,189 deaths up to August 15 of people who were either confirmed or likely to have had the Delta variant and who died within 28 days of a positive test.
While the majority of deaths with the variant were in people aged 50 or over, the under-50s account for more when it comes to hospital admissions.
He said: ‘This vaccine is only for experimental use, it’s on trial until 2023, there is no long-term data on it – anyone who takes it is foolish. Come 2023 and everything is fine, I’ll do it then. I’m absolutely not going to have one now.’
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been given an ‘estimated study completion date’ of May 2023, but it is standard practice for safety monitoring to continue after a jab is approved for use.
Richard sparked controversy in February with his comments on the vaccine in which he admitted turning down the jab in fear it wasn’t ‘kosher’.
The nineties star and his brother Fred, who sold over 30million records during a career spanning three decades, also attended an anti-lockdown protest in Trafalgar Square last September and supported anti-mask campaigners via the duo’s official Twitter account.
However the pair refute suggestions they are ‘Covid-deniers’.
Speaking about the vaccine earlier this year, Richard said: ‘I believe the whole thing is a scam. I really do. I’ve been asked to have my vaccination, but I have refused.
‘I look at it in the same way that people were advised to keep smoking because it was good for the throat. Or, ‘Isn’t asbestos great — it’ll keep your farm clean’.
‘I’m not against the vaccination. If you want to do it, that’s fine. I have decided to wait a year or two to make sure everything’s kosher. That’s all it is.
‘But interesting enough, I’m not even allowed to say that these days. Even caution now is a sin.’
He also criticised the care home system for allowing elderly patients to return following their release from hospital at the start of the pandemic.
Fairbrass added: ‘People ask me, ‘Do I not buy into the fact that it’s about protecting vulnerable people?’ But if it was about vulnerable people we wouldn’t have been filling the care homes with people from hospital, right in the early days.
‘There’s an assisted living centre near me. There’s a lady there that I know really well. We’ve become friends in the last three years. She’s 81. Her name is Grace.
‘Their Christmas party was cancelled. The dementia patients haven’t been out of their rooms since March and it’s been horrific for them.
‘The importance to people at that age of communication, of simple human contact cannot be overstated and it’s a kind of wickedness that is blind to that reality.’
Fairbrass’s stance on masks was equally dismissive.
Fred and Richard Fairbrass, pictured in 2018, refuted suggestions they are ‘Covid-deniers’
A tweet from Right Said Fred’s official Twitter account ‘got the bed-wetters at it’, the duo said
A tweet from Right Said Fred’s official Twitter account in June read: ‘I would like to thank everyone who is still wearing a mask.
‘It saves me a great deal of time. Your mask tells me I don’t need to talk to you, know you, work with you, or try to understand your mumblings.
‘You are superfluous to requirements. Many thanks.’
The account then retweeted dozens of anti-mask statements and links, referred to the ‘cult-of-Covid’ before being slated by social media followers for their views.
The duo admitted the tweet ‘got the bed-wetters at it’ and said ‘the masked army are out in force.
They later tweeted: ‘So many angry tweeters today. You’ve complied for 16 months, followed nonsensical rules implemented by an immoral and corrupt government. You should be angry at yourselves.’
Richard also told MailOnline that Right Said Fred will not play any live shows while audiences are segregated.
He added: ‘Music is a community, it’s about bringing people together. Any artist who doesn’t get that has no business being on stage.’
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