A dad-of-two described by doctors as 'one of the sickest Covid patients we’ve ever seen' said he was confronted by a conspiracy theorist during his 10-month ordeal.
Andrew Watts, from Bexley, south London, nearly had his ventilator switched off after he was admitted to Queen Elizabeth Hospital with Covid-19 pneumonia.
The 40-year-old black cab driver fell ill on Christmas Day 2020 and ended up being one of the longest patient stays the hospital in Woolwich has seen.
He spent eight months in intensive care and then two months on a ward which adds up to 300 days in total.
In a new interview he has revealed that he was confronted by a conspiracy theorist and some visitors in his hospital ward believed the virus was a 'hoax' despite his gruelling ordeal.
Sky News reports that he said he was confronted by one person visiting another patient who told him the virus was "all a conspiracy".
He said: "There were people in the hospital in the ward I was in, who were visiting certain patients, who didn't believe it.
"There were people who didn't believe in the vaccination for a start, then there were people who didn't believe Covid was real.@
Andrew said he brushed it aside and didn't want to get into arguments with them.
He added: "In the end, I just thought: 'Here's the proof - if you don't want to believe it, what can I do?'"
After a five-week induced coma and a life-threatening lung collapse, Andrew's health deteriorated to such an extent that in February, doctors called his family to tell them they were considering turning his ventilator off.
Recalling when he first became unwell, Andrew said: "A week before Christmas 2020, I started to feel ill.
“I wasn’t eating and I was losing weight, but I thought it was just the anxiety getting to me.
"When I was admitted to hospital with Covid I initially responded well to treatment, but then my oxygen levels started to drop and I was taken for a CT scan. That was when I was told that I had a pneuomothorax, which is a split on the lung.
“I was on my own as this was the height of Covid, with no visitors allowed, so it was a lot to take in.
"By this point I was crying my eyes out, on the phone to my sister Hannah and my wife Hayley, but I didn’t want to tell my mum or my dad. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them.”
After overcoming a second lung collapse, fortunately, Andrew’s lungs begun to improve and he was able to come off the ventilator in June 2021.
Andrew’s family, including his wife Hayley and sons Jack, six, and Joshua, three, were able to visit, although he could only communicate by pointing a stick at letters on a board.
