Father, 34, who nearly died with COVID challenges conspiracy theorists from his hospital bed
A 34-year-old father who has spent nearly five months in hospital after he almost died with COVID has told of his “blind panic” after the virus left him “gasping for air” - and he is urging the government to be cautious over the lifting of all restrictions.
Graham Horsfall has been a patient at Warrington Hospital since 16 January after contracting coronavirus during the peak of the second wave, and is still barely able to walk.
The IT consultant, who has no known underlying health condition, spent more than four months in an intensive care unit (ICU) and was told by medics he had just a 16% chance of survival.
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Mr Horsfall spent more than four months in an ICU ward. Pic: Graham Horsfall
As the government considers whether to stick with its plan to remove all COVID restrictions on 21 June amid a rise in cases linked to the Indian (Delta) variant, Mr Horsfall has urged ministers to continue with some measures including rules on face masks.
“I think they should be cautious,” he told Sky News.
“I wouldn’t just go: ‘Right okay, back to normal.’
“They could pick and choose things that could be relaxed a bit more, but also keep an eye on it.
“I think masks are here to stay for a long time… and they should be really.
“You’re not going to get rid of (the virus). It is going to come back again as it evolves and mutates as a disease.”
Mr Horsfall has urged the government to be cautious over the lifting of all restrictions. Pic: Graham Horsfall
Mr Horsfall has urged people to take coronavirus seriously after challenging COVID conspiracy theorists about their views online – including members of his own family.
“I’ve got family members on Facebook saying it’s all a conspiracy and a government plot to keep us all indoors and reset the economy,” he said.
“People are losing people day in a day out. It’s affecting people long-term. It affects everybody in different ways.
“I’ve seen people on Facebook saying: ‘No one I know has had it.’ I message them and say: ‘Well now you do.'”
Mr Horsfall, who has a five-year-old son called Ollie and six-year-old daughter named Lily, began isolating at home in January after a colleague contracted COVID.
Mr Horsfall’s daughter Lily, six, and five-year-old son Ollie. Pic: Graham Horsfall
Three days later, he began coughing before his condition deteriorated and he started to “gasp for air”.
His wife Emma called for an ambulance and he was rushed to Warrington Hospital, where he continues to be treated today.
“All of a sudden I couldn’t breathe,” Mr Horsfall said. “It was really scary.
“At that point, they told me they’re going to have to put me on a ventilator because I need more oxygen.
“I am in blind panic at this point. The last thing I remember doing before they put me under was transferring money to my wife because it wasn’t looking good.”
Mr Horsfall’s wife and children were isolating themselves so they could not accompany him to hospital.
Mr Horsfall pictured with his wife Emma. Pic: Graham Horsfall
After arriving at hospital, he says he was hooked up to a ventilator and sedated.
“Basically my breathing was being done for me by a machine. It’s the only thing that kept me alive,” Mr Horsfall said.
“It’s just full on fear. It’s the unknown. Am I going to come out of this or am I not?”
Mr Horsfall said he only regained consciousness again in mid-February but he was “dazed and confused” and his condition quickly deteriorated.
He was given a tracheotomy and had to be sedated again before he awoke to find he was “literally paralysed” after suffering from muscle atrophy, meaning his muscles had wasted away.
“I could move one arm,” Mr Horsfall said.
“I couldn’t move my other arm, I couldn’t move my legs, I couldn’t move my torso. I was literally paralysed.”
Mr Horsfall, who could not talk due to his tracheotomy pipe, said he initially thought he has having an hallucination when he woke up before he was handed his phone so he could text his wife.
Mr Horsfall was unable to see his children for months while in hospital. Pic: Graham Horsfall
He added: “One of the nurses turned around to me and basically said, based on the treatment I had…it had an 84% mortality rate – so 84% of people that had the same treatment as me, didn’t make it.
“It was a proper eye-opener.”
Mr Horsfall said seeing other COVID patients around him lose their lives was “harrowing”, including a man in his 20s who had recently become a father.
“You sit there thinking: ‘Bloody hell, it will literally take any age’,” he said.
“It’s not just taking the elderly, which people think.
“They would do their best to shield you from people passing away.
“Every time a curtain was shut, we knew someone had passed away on the ward. And that happened all the time.
“It’s harrowing for people. You make friends with people. Even though you couldn’t talk, you would give them a wave. And then all sudden that person’s gone.”
Mr Horsfall said his wife – who also caught the virus in January but only suffered mild symptoms – was unable to visit him when he first gained consciousness in mid-February due to the hospital’s COVID rules.
He added: “She was having to deal with the fact that she thought I was going to die while looking after our kids as well, which isn’t easy.
“She’s done amazing. Absolutely amazing. She’s doesn’t think she has, if you ask her, but she has – she’s done amazing.”
Mr Horsfall was only able to speak again after his tracheotomy pipe was removed on 12 March.
At that point, he was allowed to have one hour-long visit per week, with Mrs Horsfall required to wear full PPE and undergo temperature checks before seeing her husband.
However, Mr Horsfall had to wait until the start of May to see his children in person again when his daughter visited.
“That was emotional,” he said.
“It was a massive boost for me, mentally and physically, because it makes you push that bit harder. You take those extra couple of steps when you’re doing physio.”
Mr Horsfall said he was the last COVID patient on the ICU ward when he moved out on 25 May and he is now being treated on a respiratory ward.
He said his muscles had “rotted away” due to his lack of movement while in hospital and that he was now doing rehabilitation work and seeing a physio every day.
“I walk with a zimmer frame now, that’s how I get around,” Mr Horsfall said.
“Because of the COVID, probably the furthest I’ve gone without being out of breath is about 15 metres.
“Then you just get so breathless you have to sit down because your lungs are knackered due to COVID.
“There’s a lot of work to put in yet.”
Mr Horsfall does not know when he will be able to leave hospital but doctors believe he should be able to make a full recovery due to his age.
They are now considering whether he will be able to continue his recuperation at home in the future or in a rehabilitation centre.
“I’ve been here long enough,” Mr Horsfall said.
“I just want to be home to see my kids.”
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Health secretary on Indian (Delta) variant
He recently had his first COVID jab “to be on the safe side” because he fears he would not survive catching the virus again.
The health secretary says the Indian variant has made the decision about whether to lift lockdown restrictions on 21 June “more difficult” due to its higher rate of transmission.
Matt Hancock told Sky News the Delta variant was 40% more transmissible than the Kent (Alpha) strain, leaving the easing of social distancing in the balance for the original target date.
Ministers are “drawing up other options” before a decision is made on the 21 June easing, a government official told Sky News.
A man has been jailed for life for murdering his son’s girlfriend after she returned home from the school run.
Officers from Dyfed-Powys Police were called to an address on Bigyn Road in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, on 5 July last year.
Sophie Evans, 30, had sustained 72 separate injuries on the outside of the body, “all but three of them new injuries”.
Richard Jones, who is now 50, believed he was “being taken advantage of financially” by Ms Evans and his son, with whom she was in a relationship.
While the purpose of Jones’s visit was “purely normal”, he confronted her on that morning about his suspicions and Ms Evans’s reaction was such that Jones “lost [his] temper”.
He subjected Ms Evans to “gross violence” before ultimately strangling her and leaving the property to run errands, including ordering a new bank card and buying pastries from a bakery.
Richard Jones. Pic: Dyfed-Powys Police
‘Last time on their school run’
During sentencing on Monday, the defendant kept his head bowed for most of the hearing.
He will have to serve at least 20 years behind bars before he can be considered for release by the parole board.
Swansea Crown Court heard Ms Evans was the mother of two young children.
Passing his sentence, Judge Geraint Walters said Ms Evans “had just taken her two children for the last time on their school run” prior to the attack.
“She wasn’t to know that when she parted company with them that morning,” he added.
The court heard the Jones believed he was being defrauded by Ms Evans and his son.
“There is clear evidence, that in the days leading up to this, that you had begun harbouring thoughts that Sophie Evans and your own son were in fact financially scamming you,” he said.
“What precisely brought about that view is difficult to determine.”
Judge Walters said Jones “lost [his] temper when [he] didn’t get the answer that [he] thought [he] deserved”.
He added that, having lost his temper, the defendant “subjected [Ms Evans] to gross violence over a period of time, before you ultimately extinguished her life by strangulation”.
The court was told in evidence that at the time of the attack, Ms Evans was wearing only a bath towel.
‘The rock of our family’
In a victim personal statement, Ms Evans’s sister Kerry Quinlan told the court she was “the rock of our family”.
She said Ms Evans was taken from them in a “senseless and cruel act”.
“Words cannot express fully how much of a loss this has been to her children,” she added.
“When they cry themselves to sleep wanting their mum, she isn’t there and never will be.”
Ms Quinlan added that Jones had “taken everything from us, all in the most despicable way possible”.
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Ms Evans’s partner at the time, and the defendant’s son, Jamie Davies, said in a victim personal statement, read on his behalf, that they had both “trusted” Jones, and that Ms Evans had even been planning the defendant’s 50th birthday.
“The thought of having to live my life without Sophie causes me extreme pain and heartache,” he added.
Prosecuting, Michael Jones KC said the offence was aggravated by the defendant’s previous convictions and the fact Ms Evans was murdered in her home.
In mitigation, David Elias KC said there was a “lack of premeditation”.
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Third man charged with murder over house fire in Bradford that killed mother and her three children
The family of pop star Liam Payne has criticised the media for causing “indescribable, lasting damage” in the wake of his death.
The singer, 31, died in October last year, after falling from a hotel balcony in Argentina.
He was honoured with a video montage, played at Saturday night’s BRIT awards, celebrating his legacy – with clips including his time on X-Factor and during his time with One Direction. The band won seven BRIT awards before they split in 2016.
In a statement, released to the media after the tribute was played, his family called the death an “unspeakable tragedy”.
The family also criticised the “attention and speculation” in the press that caused “indescribable, lasting damage on the family, particularly on Liam’s son, who is trying to process emotions which no seven-year-old should have to experience”.
It said the family accepted the Court of Appeal’s decision to drop all charges in relation to Payne’s death.
One Direction pictured at the 2014 Brit Awards – the band won seven gongs during their time together. Pic: PA
One Direction, pictured in 2011. Pic: AP
Charges were dropped against three defendants: Payne’s friend Roger Nores, who had accompanied him during his trip to Buenos Aires; Gilda Martin, the manager of the Casa Sur Palermo Hotel where Payne died; and Esteban Grassi, the hotel’s main receptionist.
Two others are still facing prosecution for allegedly supplying Payne with drugs. Supplying drugs in Argentina carries a sentence of up to 15 years in prison.
Toxicology tests revealed that before his death, he had traces of alcohol, cocaine, and a prescription antidepressant in his body. A postmortem ruled his cause of death as “polytrauma” from multiple injuries and internal and external bleeding.
‘Beautiful’ Brits tribute
After the video aired, Payne’s former band member Louis Tomlinson thanked the BRIT Awards and said: “Beautiful tribute. Miss you always, brother x.”
Awards host Jack Whitehall introduced the tribute to the singer and said: “He achieved so much in the short time that he was on this earth, and was not only a supremely gifted musician but an incredibly kind soul who touched the lives of everyone he came into contact with.
Themed tributes for singer Liam Payne were seen outside St. Mary’s Church on the day of his funeral.
Pic: Reuters
Fans sing One Direction around a candle-lit tribute for Liam Payne
“We have so many amazing memories with Liam here at The BRITs. So, tonight we celebrate his legacy and look back and remember, the remarkable Liam Payne.”
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