‘It’s a fabulous team doing its best for people — no barriers’

A Radio Ulster documentary today highlights the devastating impact coronavirus is having on people across the province. Ivan Little reports

ABallycastle man has talked of how he ended up fighting for his life after coronavirus left him flat on his back just 24 hours after he was “up and about and feeling fine”. “Trying to quantify how scary it is has been has very difficult,” says Richard Mcbride in a BBC Radio Ulster documentary which looks at the devastating impact of the deadly Covid-19 on people here.

The half-hour programme, Alone Together, also hears from a new mum whose parents haven’t seen their grandchild and from a couple who had to call off their wedding just as guests prepared to fly into Northern Ireland from all over the world.

Featured, too, are business people who have no idea if their shops will ever re-open and a six-year-old boy who talks about not missing school in the lockdown.

Richard Mcbride (49), from just outside Ballycastle, started to feel unwell after returning from London, where he’s a part-time student.

“I have no idea how I contracted coronavirus,” he says. “Before I flew back home, I had not been out and about at all. I had been very, very rigorous with washing hands and disinfecting everything. And there was no obvious route of infection.

“The day before I fell ill with the fever, I was up and about doing everything normally and, all of a sudden, I started suffering from a very high temperature.”

Richard, who has had two treatments for cancer in the past, tried to convince himself he had the flu, but then he developed a sore throat and a “pretty awful cough”.

“The strange thing with it, which convinced me it wasn’t flu, was that it would come and go. For half-a-day, you would feel okay and then there was half-a-day of feeling absolutely dreadful. Sleep was terrible, fatigue was pretty bad,” says Richard, who then had difficulty breathing “as if all the air had been sucked out of my lungs”.

Richard adds that his normal reaction would have been

❝ I had not been out and about at all.. I had been very rigorous with washing hands