Staffordshire Covid sceptic urges people to get vaccine

Marcus Birks has been in intensive care for a week

A Covid sceptic who has been hospitalised with the virus said he would urge people to have the vaccine.

"If you haven't been ill, you don't think you're going to get ill, so you listen to the [anti-vaccine] stuff," Marcus Birks said.

He has been in the intensive care unit at Royal Stoke University Hospital for the past week.

"When you feel like you can't get enough breath, it's the scariest feeling in the world," he said.

A musician, he toured with his wife Lis, who is currently pregnant, as the group Capella, and said he ate healthily and exercised five times a week.

The 40-year-old, from Leek, said he had not had the vaccine.

Vaccination rates in the Staffordshire Moorlands District Council area are among the highest in England, with about 90% of those aged over 18 having had at least one dose as of 9 August, compared with an average of 88.9% nationally.

"I kind of was ignorant towards it and just put it off," Mr Birks said.

Flu-like feeling

He said the information had been skewed by social media and conspiracy theorists.

• Latest news from the West Midlands

Mr Birks said symptoms had started with a flu-like feeling, which got progressively worse, and he was eventually admitted to hospital, suffering from breathing difficulties.

He said it had been a shock because he rarely got ill.

"First thing I am going tell all my family to do is get the vaccine and anybody I see," he said.

"And as soon as I can get it, I am definitely getting it."