No. 10 parties 'so unfair' says Covid coma survivor
Government officials "are wrong" for having a party while NHS nurses were risking their lives in the fight against Covid-19, says a virus survivor who fought back from a coma.
Ministers have come under fire over a Downing Street drinks party alleged to have been attended by the Prime Minister and his wife during lockdown.
Police chiefs are said to be in contact with the Cabinet Office over the alleged "bring your own booze" party in the garden behind No.10 in May 2020.
It comes after the Government was widely criticised for a series of parties held at Christmas time in 2020 in apparent breach of Covid-19 guidance.
Darren Buttrick, from Coven, said the situation was "unfair" and came at a time when the majority of people were following the rules ministers had imposed.
Mr Buttrick caught Covid-19 in March 2020 and was placed on a ventilator, in a coma, at New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton. It was there he was told he would have 15 minutes to call his family and was warned it could be his last ever call, because he was extremely ill.
Thankfully, after some initial difficulty after being taken off the ventilator, he recovered. However his father-in-law, lifelong Wolves fan Kenneth "Ken" Morgans, sadly passed away aged 77 from the virus in January last year.
"If you go back to the very beginning all of the guidance and all of the lockdown rules, most people observed them and then you see reports and pictures in the garden at No. 10 - we couldn't do that," Mr Buttrick said.
"It's unfair on people who've obeyed the rules and guidelines, especially those who've lost people. My wife lost her father in January last year and it's very very unfair that they were celebrating whilst people were in hospital."
The 50-year-old said that to in order to protect them, his wife would sit outside her parents' home in Coven and speak to them through the window. Meanwhile, food shopping would be dropped off at their door by their family for them to collect, all in line with the rules.
Mr Buttrick said: "We did everything we should've done and it feels the Government have turned a blind eye to this. I think people have got apathy with not getting vaccines because they're thinking the Government aren't doing this, so I'm not going to either.
He added that he kept in contact with the nurses who saved his life – and had recently discovered he was the sixth person in intensive care with Covid-19, and the first person to leave.
The nurses would sit and hold his hand and speak to him while he was in the coma and fighting for his life against the virus. "They were putting their lives on the line to do their jobs and look after me and these Government officials are drinking wine. That for me is wrong."
