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.
Never wrestle with a pig. You get dirty. And besides, the pig likes it.
Looking at the festive ding-dong that’s broken out between Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, you do wonder if the Tory leader should take on board this famous quote – because there was only ever going to be one winner from this spat.
The Reform UK leader has spent the thick end of three decades dragging his political opponents into fights that ultimately benefit his cause. This is no different.
What would have been a relatively low-key Christmas stunt has been elevated into literal front page news.
Reform UK insiders say that, in turn, is driving more people to the party and pushing up their member count further.
Nigel Farage has spent his career dragging opponents into fights. Pic: Reuters
Part of this is down to news editors grabbing on to any bit of politics that’s around during the quiet period between Christmas and New Year.
Why Badenoch and her team didn’t clock this and hold back will likely bewilder some in her party.
An argument the Tories should have swerved
What’s more, the Tory leader is also currently on the back foot regarding her central accusation that the Reform membership number is fake.
Reform agreed to show Sky News details of their account on NationBuilder – a platform that manages memberships and donations for many political parties.
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From September – Farage: I could become prime minister
The number of active memberships in the account portal matched the figure on the ticker – with their website count growing in size shortly after the NationBuilder tally increased.
Sky News also conducted its own analysis on the ticker and found nothing suspicious as it stands (read the full analysis here).
Kemi Badenoch has said Reform changed the coding when people began to point out the alleged discrepancy, but has yet to provide any evidence to back this up.
Either way, this is still an argument the Tories should probably have swerved.
All politicians need to pick their battles
Yes, signed-up members mean more income for a party, but they don’t necessarily translate into wider electoral success. After all, Labour’s membership surged under Jeremy Corbyn, but he still lost two elections.
But that’s not to say both main parties shouldn’t be looking very closely in their rearview mirror at Reform.
The party’s reaction to this row shows a far more professional behind-the-scenes operation than the previous, more ramshackle incarnations of the Farage-led political machine.
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Is Reform UK winning the ‘bro vote’?
Talk to long time allies of the Reform leader, and even they sound somewhat surprised by how slick their project has got.
They also point to electoral milestones on the horizon where the party’s results at the ballot box can be objectively tracked – beginning with May’s local elections next year and running through the Welsh Assembly vote in 2026.
There’ll be many more attempts by Nigel Farage to wrestle with his political opponents before then.
The task for the Tory and indeed Labour leaders is to pick their fights and judge how dirty they are prepared to get.
UK
Nigel Farage threatens legal action if Kemi Badenoch doesn’t apologise for saying membership ticker was ‘fake’
Nigel Farage has threatened to take legal action against Tory leader Kemi Badenoch if she does not apologise for accusing him of publishing a “fake” ticker showing Reform UK’s membership increasing to overtake the Conservatives.
The Reform UK leader has reacted furiously to Ms Badenoch’s assertion that he was “manipulating [his] own supporters” with a ticker that is “coded to tick up automatically” after it showed the insurgent right-wing party had gone past 131,680 members – the number of eligible Conservative Party members in its leadership election in the autumn.
He is demanding an apology from Ms Badenoch for the “accusations of fraud and dishonesty” that he labelled “disgraceful”, and said he is “not going to take it lying down”.
Asked by Sky News in a call with journalists if he is going to sue the Tory leader for libel, Mr Farage said: “I’m going to take some action in the next couple of days. I’ve got to decide exactly what it is, but I’m certainly not going to take it lying down.”
“I think it’s an absolutely outrageous thing for her to have said,” he continued. “I know she’s got a very bad temper. I know she’s well known for lashing out at people, but I am not at all happy, and I’m going to take some action.”
He added that he will confirm within two days exactly what this action will be if she does not apologise for the “intemperate outburst”.
Analysis: Badenoch needs to pick her battles
Reform showed Sky News the coding used to link the ticker to the member count within their account on the platform NationBuilder. The demonstration provided strong evidence that the ticker was not automated. Scroll down for the full analysis.
A Tory source told Sky News: “Fake Farage is clearly rattled that his Boxing Day Publicity Stunt is facing serious questions over a fake clock and hundreds of ‘members’ seemingly joining in the middle of the night.
“Like most normal people around the UK, Kemi is enjoying Christmas with her family and looking forward to taking on the challenges of renewing the Conservative Party in the New Year.”
‘It’s a fake’
The row started after Reform UK said on Boxing Day that it officially had more members than the Conservative Party, which Mr Farage, party leader and MP for Clacton-on-Sea, hailed as a “historic moment”, describing his party as “the real opposition”.
Reform UK also shared a video of the membership tracker being projected on to the Conservative Party headquarters in London.
But Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch accused the party of issuing misleading figures: “Manipulating your own supporters at Xmas eh, Nigel?. It’s not real. It’s a fake… [the website has been] coded to tick up automatically.”
Posting on X, she added that the Tories had “gained thousands of new members since the leadership election”.
Reform UK hit back at Ms Badenoch, publishing a screenshot of an online register claiming to show “active memberships”.
Reform UK chair Zia Yusuf also waded into the row, claiming that people whose memberships of the Tory party had lapsed voted in the autumn leadership election that saw Ms Badenoch elected to the role.
In a call with journalists earlier, he repeated the assertion, and after putting out a call on social media for people to contact him if they had voted in the leadership election but are no longer party members, he said he has received “just so many” that he has not yet been able to verify their claims.
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Ms Badenoch and the Conservative Party have been contacted for comment.
Reform UK has said it will submit to an audit of its membership numbers by one of the “big four” accountancy firms if the Tories do the same.
Farage gets personal
Speaking to journalists earlier, Mr Farage was very critical of Ms Badenoch personally, saying her claim that their membership number ticker had been faked “reflects her personality”.
He labelled her “aggressive” and “liable to lashing out”, and said he thinks she wrote her tweet out of a “slight sense of anger”.
“She’s got to fully disprove this, and she’s going to find life a lot more difficult and bitterly regret putting this out on Boxing Day afternoon,” he added.
A man has been charged with four counts of attempted murder after a car collided with a group of people in London’s West End on Christmas Day.
Anthony Gilheaney, 30, will appear before Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday and has also been charged with causing serious injury by driving whilst disqualified, driving a motor vehicle dangerously and possession of a bladed article in a public place, the Metropolitan Police said.
Forensic investigators collect evidence at the scene on Christmas Day. Pic: PA
Items of clothing and blood are seen on the pavement. Pic: PA
Four people were taken to hospital after the incident, with one in a life-threatening condition.
Metropolitan Police officers were called to reports of a crash and a car driving on the wrong side of the road at 12.45am.
The incident occurred outside the Sondheim Theatre, which is the London home of the musical Les Miserables.
Shaftesbury Avenue is at the heart of London‘s West End and the city’s theatre district.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy said the suspect was arrested within minutes of the incident “in the early hours of Christmas Day”.
“Since then, investigators have worked tirelessly to build the case and have today charged Anthony Gilheaney with four counts of attempted murder.
“Our thoughts now are with the victims, one of which remains in critical condition in hospital.”
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