'I can't emphasise how sick this can make you': Intensive care doctor describes how ill coronavirus made him

An intensive care consultant who contracted coronavirus has described how the disease left him sleeping 18 hours a day and feeling "absolutely terrible".

Dr David Hepburn, who works at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport, south Wales, spoke about how Covid-19 left him bed-ridden for a week to help raise awareness about its effects.

He also urged people to follow the Government’s advice in order to protect people and the NHS through the pandemic.

The video, which was posted on the Aneurin Beavan University Health Board Twitter account, has been viewed more than 15,000 times.

Dr Hepburn said: “I’d like to tell you that I got coronavirus from heroically looking after some of these patients, but actually the reality is much more mundane.

“I think I probably caught this from contact with colleagues at work or possibly somebody out in the street before any of the coronavirus patients really arrived on the intensive care unit.

“It started off very innocuously. I had a burning sensation in my nose, I lost my sense of taste, I never had a cough and then I’ve had a week of just feeling absolutely terrible.

“Aching muscles, aching bones and unable to get out of bed – sleeping 16, 18 hours a day.

“I’m on the mend now thankfully, I hope, but I can’t emphasise to you how sick this can make you.

“Please, please listen to the advice that’s going round at the minute.

“This is a small sacrifice for a short period of time and then life will go back to normal again.

“But we have to protect everybody and we have to protect the NHS. Thanks.”

He added many of the patients being treated in his intensive care unit were “certainly not frail, elderly people that maybe some of us have been led to believe that we would be seeing.

“They’re young, they’re fit and they have young families.”

On Tuesday, Public Health Wales confirmed that 248 people in the Aneurin Bevan area had tested positive for Covid-19 – more than twice the number elsewhere in Wales.

Health minister Vaughan Gething told a press conference in Cardiff on Tuesday that there was a “particular cluster” of cases in that area.

But he said it was not anticipated that it would be an “outlier” as the outbreak continued.

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