Man leaves hospital 248 days after developing Covid-19

• Video report by ITV News Meridian's Sarah Saunders

A carer from Ramsgate returned home on Thursday (23rd September), more than eight months after being admitted to hospital with Covid-19.

Alan Finch spent months in a coma, and battled sepsis and pneumonia after being rushed to the QEQM hospital in Margate in January.

Alan and his partner Clare Wickham had both developed coronavirus at the same time, but Alan suddenly got worse. 

He was rushed to hospital and within a day put into an induced coma and placed on a ventilator. Medics feared he wouldn't make it.

At times unable to visit to hospital because of Covid restrictions, Clare wore one of Alan's T-shirts every day of his hospitalisation, to feel close to him.

After weeks spent in hospital already and with lungs ravaged by the illness, Alan was transferred and spent another three months at a rehabilitation unit at Kent and Canterbury hospital, where staff had to teach and to speak, swallow and move again.

Alan says he is aware there has been some controversy over the issue while he has been a patient but his first job now will be to get vaccinated.

He had been due to get his first jab the day after he was sent to intensive care.