FITNESS-MAD DAD-TO-BE WAS ‘TOO HEALTHY’ TO DIE

MARCUS BIRKS, 40, who exercised five times a week, believed he was too fit and healthy to get ill from Covid, and declined to get the vaccine. But the father-to-be, from Leek, Staffordshire, died on August 27.

His pregnant wife Lis wrote: ‘My heart has been completely ripped out and I don’t know how you are supposed to deal with such pain and hurt.’

In a BBC interview from his bed in Royal Stoke University Hospital on August 11, Marcus (left with Lis and, right, in hospital) said: ‘If you haven’t been ill, you don’t think you’re going to get ill, you listen to the anti-vaccine stuff.’

Describing how Covid affected him, he said: ‘When you feel like you can’t get enough breath, it’s the scariest feeling in the world. First thing I am going to tell all my family to do is get the vaccine, and anybody else I see.’