The widow of the UK’s first Covid victim has caught the virus almost a year to the day since her husband died from it, their daughter has revealed.
Jean Attwood will spend the first anniversary of husband Peter Attwood’s death isolating away from her family in a care home.
The 86-year-old, who suffers from dementia, tested positive for coronavirus in hospital yesterday and was transferred back to the home where she has been living since her husband passed away.
Mr Attwood, 84, a retired company secretary, from Chatham, Kent, went to hospital with a mystery cough and fever on January 7 last year.
When he died three weeks later on January 30, heart failure and pneumonia was initially blamed.
But a post mortem later showed Covid was a cause of death — making him the UK’s first recorded virus victim and the first outside China.
Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, the couple’s daughter Jane Attwood, 46, said: ‘My mum is not well at all. Since dad died her dementia has got worse and worse.
Jean Attwood (left), the widow of the UK’s first Covid victim Peter Attwood (right) has caught the virus almost a year to the day since her husband died from it, their daughter has revealed
Peter, 86, a retired company secretary from Kent, died on January 30 with his death initially being blamed on heart failure and pneumonia. In August a postmortem found it was Covid
The couple’s daughter Jane (above holding a photo of her father) told MailOnline her mother will spend the first anniversary of his death isolating in a care home after she tested positive
‘She went into hospital and yesterday she tested positive for the virus. Luckily she doesn’t have any Covid symptoms. She is back in isolation at the home.’
Jane said: ‘Mum has really deteriorated since dad died and now she must deal with this all alone. It’s her I feel most sorry for. They were married for more than 50 years.’
Jane spoke hours after Boris Johnson confirmed Britain’s grim death toll had passed 100,000, the worst hit country in Europe since the pandemic began.
‘To say that my dad was first out of 100,000 makes him sound like just a number. But he was so much more than a statistic,’ she said.
‘It is so upsetting that a year on the numbers are still growing. It blows your mind to think that 100,000 people have died, it just doesn’t sink in. So many people have lost their lives, it is such a tragedy for everybody.’
Jane said she developed a Covid-like illness on December 15, 2019, six weeks before her father’s death and now believes she passed it onto him.
Claiming that he and many more could still be alive if Beijing had not covered up the outbreak, she said: ‘Maybe if we had known about it a lot earlier, many people could have been saved. There is a lot more transparency from the Chinese government now, but before it was obviously covered up.
‘My dad probably wouldn’t have been saved, but maybe countless of others, thousands upon thousands, would have done.
Jane (above), 46, from Chatham, Kent, said that Jean, who suffers from dementia, has deteriorated since Peter died and moved into a home in October when she flooded her house
‘That is really upsetting and we have to look back and see how this happened, to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
‘A year later, it is just very hard to get your head around really that somebody could die from a virus from China and that he had never, ever stepped foot out of the country.
‘But the crazy thing is that we didn’t know what it was. I feel that if the Chinese had opened up about the virus we could have known. There is still no explanation as to how he caught the virus.’
‘In the month he passed away China was still saying they had something like 34 deaths or something ridiculous like that.
‘There were so many people around the world who obviously had it and they were just going to be put down as (suffering from) pneumonia.
‘My dad’s lungs were in such a terrible state, and luckily tissues samples were taken as he was cremated and we would never have known anything about it and it would have been put down as heart failure or lung problems.
‘The coroner wasn’t happy with just putting it down as pneumonia and the tissue samples showed it as Covid a few months after.’
In August a post mortem confirmed that he had died from Covid, more than two months before officials discovered the virus was spreading in Britain.
‘The most upsetting thing now is that if the real cause of dad’s death had been identified sooner that information could have been used to slow the death rate. But clearly there was a cover-up and information was held back.’