A healthcare worker and dad-of-two died from coronavirus after he failed to get a call back from NHS 111.
Julius Sana was eventually admitted to hospital and died after spending 18 days on a ventilator.
The 40-year-old from Newport, south Wales, was a popular health care support worker at St Peter's Hospital and was known for "always smiling".
His family have described him as a dedicated father to Marc, 11, and Princess, 5, and a loving husband to wife Maricar.
Mr Sana had a cardiac arrest at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport on Monday, April 27.
His sister, Jovelyn Villareal, who moved with him to Wales from the Philippines around 15 years ago, said she dropped Mr Sana at the hospital after he began complaining of a fever, Wales Online reports.
She said: “He said he hadn’t slept and he had a temperature of 39°c.
“I called 111 and they said they would call back but didn’t.
“I called back five hours later and they said they would call an ambulance, but because he was alert he was not a priority, which is understandable.
“So me and my husband brought him to the hospital.
“The last thing we did was pray together, then I left him in the hospital because they wouldn’t let us in.”
Ms Villareal said she spoke to her brother the following day, who told her over the phone he had been put on oxygen and antibiotics, but later that afternoon she was told by doctors he had deteriorated and had been put on a ventilator.
She said: “When he was intubated it was his daughter’s fifth birthday.
“Imagine how she will remember it. It was so awful.”
“There was no goodbye. We had hoped every day."
She added: "Julius was shy but everyone loved him.
"He was never in trouble with anyone, he was humble.
"He was a loving son and would call our mother in the Philippines every day.
"His smallest child is crying all the time for him, he was the one who would take his children to school every day.
"He loved his job and everyone loved him on the wards."
