Man sold house to buy boat after surviving Covid

Tony Davies said his experience with Covid "changed his life"

A man who survived a near-death experience with Covid said the experience changed his life, leading him to sell his house and buy a boat.

Tony Davies, from Coventry, shared his experience of the pandemic with a Covid inquiry event held at the city's Belgrade Theatre. The event, called Every Story Matters, has been travelling around the country to speak to people and find out how the pandemic affected them.

The marketing manager, 59, said he was in hospital for two months and spent about a week in intensive care which made him realise life was short and that he wanted to live differently.

The pandemic was world wide running from January 2020 to May 2023, according to the World Health Organisation.

He said: “I was lucky that I wasn’t on a ventilator – I was on a CPAP (a continuous positive airway pressure machine) but that way, I was awake all the time so I could see everything that was going on.

“The NHS were brilliant…they were really up against it. I’ve seen them going through pure hell looking after everyone.”

He said that while he has not suffered any long-term physical effects from his experience, he sometimes has flashbacks.

But he said there was a positive side, as it made him realise that “life is short”.

“I came out and it changed my life. I sold my house and bought a narrowboat – I live on a boat now just outside of Coventry,” he said.

Kate Eisenstein, deputy secretary to the inquiry, said people had varied experiences of the pandemic

Kate Eisenstein, deputy secretary to the inquiry, said people in different parts of the UK had varied experiences of the pandemic, which was why they were travelling the country.

“The way people here in the West Midlands experienced that period will have been very different to people in Inverness or Wrexham or Southampton,” she said.

“That’s why we’re travelling the whole of the country to listen to as many different people as people.”

The event came after some bereaved families said they felt like their voices were not being heard.

Alan Handley, who lost his wife to Covid, said: “It’s a duty that should be given to the public to hear these stories, however distressing they are but we’re being marginalised again.”