A man being treated for Covid in a London hospital admitted he repeatedly put off getting the vaccine because he was too 'lazy'.
Jasem Nissi, 48, is intubated in an intensive care unit at London's Royal Free Hospital after suffering severe complications from the virus for over two months.
Despite being a 'strong man', the patient said that he felt too weak to sit at the edge of his bed or get up to go to the toilet, he told Sky News' home editor Jason Farrell in an interview.
Asked if he was vaccinated, Mr Nissi said: 'No, no no, I wasn't because I was lazy to be honest with you.
'Every day, I said "tomorrow, tomorrow". And I'd always, you know, go to work and back to home. Nowhere else, only work and back home.
'My work environment is, usually you can say it's clean because no one can go in if not vaccinated or if [they've] not done the test. To be honest with you, big mistake. I didn't get the vaccine. It's happened, it's a mistake.'
Jasem Nissi, 48, is intubated in an intensive care unit at London's Royal Free Hospital after suffering severe complications from the virus for over two months
Asked how the illness had affected him, Mr Nissi said: ‘When I’m lying down, I can’t breathe without my mask. But if I want to sit on the edge of the bed, it’s not possible. I lose my breathing, it’s going to be very, very short.
‘It’s very hard and my strength is gone. I’m a very strong guy, but now I can’t stand, I can’t do nothing.
‘I’m worried, I just want to walk… You see, my body is shaking because it’s very weak. My hand, when I want to eat, it’s shaking, all my body is shaking. And I feel very cold, freezing.
Jasem Nissi, 48, says it was a 'big mistake' not to get the vaccine
‘I love to eat, but the problem is I can’t go to the toilet because [being] in the bed, it’s not natural you know. This made me worried, and then you lose your dignity and it’s embarrassing.’
News of Mr Nissi's ordeal comes after data from across England showed less than nine per cent of Covid patients in critical care are boosted. This compares to more than 60 per cent who have not had a vaccine.
This is despite over-18s with boosters making up the majority of the adult population, compared to just the fraction who are unvaccinated.
Ministers have called for all adults to book in their booster as the country's best line of defence against the current Omicron wave.
Yesterday, Dr David Hepburn of Grange University Hospital in Cwmbran, South Wales, said there are now no vaccinated Covid patients in his hospital's critical care.
The £350million Specialist Critical Care Centre, which has 24 ICU beds, was opened four months early in November 2020 in order to tackle spiralling coronavirus cases at the time.
But Dr Hepburn said the only people now in treatment are those who have chosen not to take up the offer of a vaccine. He spoke as official figures showed a near-45 per cent fall in daily infections, to 120,821 on Monday. It was the sixth day in a row cases have fallen week-on-week.
The Royal Free Hospital in north London has ten Covid patients in intensive care and 90 in the hospital. This time last year, it was treating 90 Covid patients in ITU (pictured) and 300 overall
The proportion of critical care hospital admissions for Covid in the unvaccinated (orange bar in the top graph) is increasing again to more than 60 per cent, despite the group making up less than 20 per cent of the population as of December (bottom graph)
The news came on a day that experts said Britain was the closest country in the northern hemisphere to exiting the pandemic.
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