Long Covid trial for ex-mayor who made a miracle recovery
Former Wolverhampton mayor Milkinder Jaspal was told he was expected to die after he fell in in January last year.
He survived but is still experiencing fatigue. He said: “Somehow I pulled through and have lived to fight another day.”
Mr Jaspal is taking part in a clinical trial for long Covid patients after almost dying when he was struck down with the virus exactly a year ago.
The ward representative for Heath Town, aged 62, was left fighting for his life on a ventilator for six weeks having tested positive for coronavirus.
He is still on the mend and said life is a struggle due to the after effects of the illness on his health.
Mr Jaspal lost all his body strength and has had to learn to walk, eat and drink again as part of his initially recovery and is now taking part in a three-month study for Covid-19 survivors.
He has remained full of praise for New Cross Hospital staff whom he said did everything they could to help him to pull through.
And he is counting his blessings to be able to breathe fresh air and see the clouds and the sky.
“The body has got stronger, but I get tired after 20 or 30 minutes if I’ve been walking or doing something.
“I’m still finding it difficult to climb stairs which takes a lot out of me. I have been enrolled on trial for long term Covid for 12 weeks,” the Labour councillor said.
The trial is a Covid-19 rehabilitation programme designed to support patients who are finding it difficult to recover from the long term effects of the disease.
It will involve one-to-one phone calls with a rehabilitation specialist, and a group live stream exercise class which will be run remotely, meaning he can participate at home for the first six weeks.
This will be followed by six weeks when he will attend a fitness and wellbeing centre. Doctors had told him that he was likely to die after an X-ray revealed his lungs were 95 per cent infected and his devastated family was advised to prepare to say their last goodbyes in January last year.
However, his lungs began to clear and after nearly two months in hospital he was sent home on March 17 for the expected long and difficult road to recovery.
“The doctors thought I would not survive. They said the X-ray was the worst they had seen and that no one could possibly survive or recover from so much infection.
“Somehow I pulled through and have lived to fight another day.”
He has also joined in calls for lessons to be learned from the pandemic response so that, in a future health crisis, fewer people have to go through the trauma suffered by himself and his family.
Mr Jaspal and a number of family members contracted the virus, but only he ended up with serious complications. He said: “We didn’t act as fast as we should have at the start of pandemic, especially with the lockdown and with closing the borders,” he said.
“It meant we were always chasing the ball, which is a dangerous situation to be in when you are dealing with people’s health.
“There is no doubt in my mind that if we hadn’t dillied and dallied at the start of it all then we would have been in a much better position.
“Fortunately the commitment and dedication from the doctors and health professionals shone through.”
A joint report by the Commons Health & Social Care and Science Committees concluded that decisions taken by ministers early in the pandemic last year “rank as one of the most important public health failures the United Kingdom has ever experienced”.
It stated that serious errors left thousands suffering unnecessarily and cost tens of thousands of lives, adding that ministers waited too long to push through lockdown measures in early 2020.
The Labour stalwart said he was not surprised by the report’s findings.
His wife Jasbir and daughter-in-law Jaspreet who are also elected members of Wolverhampton Council and believe they may be the first to have three family members elected to the same ward on any council in the West Midlands and elsewhere.
