Wiped out in a week, family who shunned vaccine
A HEARTBROKEN son lost his parents and brother to Covid within a week after all three refused to get vaccinated.
Francis Goncalves said his father contracted the virus in hospital – and thinks his mother and brother caught it at a family meal days later.
He said the family had become ‘caught up in a lot of anti-vaccination propaganda’, and he was sharing his experience in the hope it would encourage other sceptics to get jabbed.
He added: ‘It preys on people who are afraid and they fall into the trap. I’ve spoken to so many people who are terrified of the vaccine and it costs lives.’
Mr Goncalves, 43, said his parents had underlying health conditions but his brother Shaul, 40, was the ‘healthiest person’ he knew and the vaccine would have saved his life.
The chef, who lives in Cardiff, tried to get to Portugal where his family live when he heard they had become ill. Tragically, as he waited for tests to enable him to fly out, his brother and father Basil, 73, got worse and they died before he got there.
His mother Charmagne, 65, was also unwell by the time he landed and had been put in an induced coma in hospital.
‘They allowed me to go and see her which was already a sign that things weren’t going well,’ he said.
Days later he got a call to say she had also died. A week later, on Sunday, August 1, all three were buried next to each other in the Covid victim section of a Lisbon cemetery.
Mr Goncalves grew up with his ‘small and close’ family in South Africa and they moved to Britain in 2015. A year later, his parents and brother moved to Portugal, where Basil was originally from.
He said: ‘My father gave everything. He would wear broken shoes so we could have the best. My mother would do anything for us. My brother was my best friend.’