Coronavirus: Applause as patient leaves Redditch ICU after 59 days

A Worcestershire man has left intensive care after nearly 60 days of treatment for coronavirus - after his family was twice told he may not survive.

There was applause and a guard of honour from staff when Leighton Webster, 42, finally was moved on to a ward at Alexandra Hospital in Redditch.

Although he still remains in hospital, his wife Emma said he was doing "better".

She praised the staff who cared for him in the intensive care unit.

Mrs Webster said the family had initially thought her husband had the flu and he was staying with his father when his breathing became "very shallow" and he was taken by ambulance to the hospital.

He was immediately taken to intensive care where within hours, Mrs Webster said, she was told he would be sedated and put into a coma.

At one point, she said she had received a call in the middle of the night asking her to say her goodbyes to her husband.

"I said 'come on, get your bottom into gear, we have been together 19 years, please don't leave me'.

"I said 'I need you, I can't cope without you'. I said 'I just physically can't cope', and I held his hand and I sang our wedding song to him - Heaven, by Bryan Adams."

Eventually he pulled through and despite being in a coma, his wife and children would phone him each day to talk to him about what was happening outside.

"I didn't want him to feel as if he'd missed out on something and I hoped at some point he would actually hear something, something would spur him on to wake up," Mrs Webster said.

Mr Webster, a supermarket worker, is now on a ward for patients with Covid-19 and his treatment continues.

"He has still got a chest drain in and is just doing a lot of physio and that's because he can't walk," his wife said.

"He has had sepsis, he has had deep vein thrombosis, been on a dialysis machine, so it has been quite bad for him."

The couple are also beginning to plan what they and their three children will do to celebrate when he is finally discharged.

"He will probably go to the Blues. He is a Birmingham City fan, he's got a season ticket.

"I would like to do something as a family because it is the girls' birthdays in August and we are hoping, you never know, he might come out in August."

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