‘This is real’: Covid patients’ stark stories from hospital
Three Covid-19 patients in a Sydney hospital have appeared in a video that illustrates the damage the virus can do, urging people to get vaccinated.
Fawaz lies facedown in a hospital bed, wracked with fever, headaches, shortness of breath.
“It’s not a game,” says the 50-year-old construction worker, who doesn’t know how he contracted the Covid-19 virus that infected his whole family, with his daughter being hospitalised as he speaks.
“Today I am really bad: my fever, my headache, my breathing,” he says.
“She’s getting dizzy, her heart rate is too high and she is finding it hard to breathe.
“Please get vaccinated. I wish I knew beforehand. This is not a game, it’s for real.”
His first jab had been booked for October.
He is one of three Covid-19 patients in a Sydney hospital to take part in a video released by Sydney Local Health District on Wednesday which starkly illustrates the damage the virus can do, and urges people to get vaccinated.
Osama, a 35-year-old Lakemba tradie, speaks as his children are cared for at Westmead Hospital, and his wife lies in ICU at another hospital.
Single mum and pharmacy worker Ramona fights tears as she reveals the physical and mental toll the virus – contracted after receiving her first jab – has taken.
She hasn’t seen her kids in weeks.
“This is real,” she says.
“I’ve had two kids and a major operation but I’ve never had to push myself to recover mentally this much.”
Concord Hospital senior respiratory physician Associate Professor Lucy Morgan said she was struck by how many of her Covid-19 patients were young.
“Some of the stories I heard in my most recent weekend in the wards were really heartbreaking,” she said.
With Catie McLeod
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