Heartbroken family urging everyone to get vaccine after 'fit and healthy' dad dies of Covid

08.01.2022 - 20:01 / dailyrecord.co.uk

A heartbroken family have urged everyone to get the vaccine after their 'fit and healthy' dad died of Covid-19.

Stephen Doyle, aged 45, sent a devastating message to the mother of his children as he lay dying in hospital.

Stephen had not received the jab but according to his anguished family, was 'fit and healthy' before he fell ill with the virus, as reported by Wales Online.

He sadly passed away on January 3, 2022.

His cousin Michelle Pierce, a nurse practitioner at Llandudno Hospital in Wales, spoke out on behalf of the family.

She said they wanted people to realise coronavirus was affecting younger, healthy people who haven’t been vaccinated – and their families too.

Michelle, 54, said: “When Stephen was in hospital he texted his former partner Nichola and said: ‘I’m getting the jabs as soon as I can’.

“He said he never wanted to go through this again. Sadly, he never got the chance to get vaccinated. It was too late for him.

“He was against the vaccination before he went in and I would say he was influenced by all the talk on social media.

“He had no underlying health conditions. He was fit and healthy.”

The former docker, who was working as a dispatch supervisor at the time of his death, had already been in hospital because of Covid but was discharged with antibiotics in mid-December.

Michelle said: “We don’t know whether he discharged himself or not but he was self-isolating. His ex-partner Nichola went to see him on December 22 and found him very unwell.”

She called 999 immediately and Stephen was readmitted to hospital with breathing difficulties and very low oxygen levels in his blood.

Within 24 hours he was moved to the hospital’s intensive therapy unit (ITU) and the decision to put him on a ventilation machine, to