Holiday park owner Henry Cooper is one of the many people who have contracted coronavirus on the Isle of Sheppey.

Now, in a no-punches-pulled attack, he has hit out at all those who don't believe Covid-19 exists and won't wear face masks.

He said: "All I've seen on social media is people claiming that the coronavirus isn't real and that there is no need to wear masks. Well, let me tell you that from my own experience, Covid is very real.

"From the second I was told I had the virus it began to affect my mental health. Every time I turned on the TV or radio or opened a newspaper I felt as if I and my family were going to die. It gets in your head and you can’t get it out. It breaks you down and massively affects your mental state."

He added: "As I became sicker, I found myself constantly looking at my wife Sandra and our children and praying to a God I still don't believe in to spare their precious lives and not let this virus take them or me.

"At one point, I was crouched in the corner of my shower spewing blood down my own chest, choking because I couldn’t breath and thinking that this was it.

"I was terrified I would never see my wife and kids again. But at the same time I was scared to death to call them as I didn’t want them to panic when they saw the state I was in."

Around the same time his 94-year-old grandfather, who had just lost his wife of 75 years, also contracted the virus.

Mr Cooper, 40, who owns Elmhurst Caravan Park at Eastchurch, said: "He was left to fend for himself, on his own at his house, because there is no help once you get the virus. You are literally left alone because no one can come near you."

After his grandfather became so sick he couldn’t feed himself, Mr Cooper admitted: "We had to run the risk of getting fined ten grand to get him so we could keep him alive with us."

After days of looking after him in a room, he was finally taken to hospital.

Mr Cooper recalled: "I had to watch my wife and three boys say their final heartbreaking goodbyes to him over a phone held to his head on a hospital ward.

"I was terrified I would never see my wife and kids again..."

"Literally minutes after my grandfather took his final breath, I got a phone call to say my father was now in an ambulance and being rushed into intensive care where he was fighting for his life on his own because none of us were allowed near him.

"We now have to live with the guilt that it was probably one of us who gave the virus to my father."

He added: "If anyone wants to know what it is like living in a horror movie, then they can carry on refusing to wear a mask. That way, they will soon find out how real this virus is. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

"Please, people, take this seriously because, within a blink of an eye, it can rip your family apart."

Mr Cooper believes he caught the virus from a cousin who had no symptoms. He said: "She only realised she had it when she went for a pre-op test at a hospital and came up positive."

Infection rates continue to rise on the Island, which latest figures show is close to 300 weekly cases per 100,000 people and a councillor has said the virus is being treated like a joke.

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