'She Wasn't Just A Number' – Families Of These Covid Victims Want You To Know Who They Were
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In the UK alone, more than 45,500 people have lost their lives to Covid-19.
At the height of the coronavirus crisis, the country was reporting the deaths of more than 900 people a day in hospitals.
But behind each one of these numbers is a person – someone with a family, friends and a life story to be told.
Three families have shared tributes with HuffPost UK to the loved ones they have lost during the pandemic.
Amrik Singh
“Fiercely independent” Amrik Singh, 89, was one of the fittest people his grandson Paman knew.
Getting up at 5.30am every day to drive himself to the gym, when he fell ill and tested positive for Covid-19, his family were optimistic about his recovery.
Amrik arrived in the UK from rural Punjab, India, when he was 33.
After working as a builder in Kent, he was offered the chance to open a paper shop in Glasgow’s West End, where he built his new life.
A dad-of-seven, grandfather of 22 and later a great-grandfather, Amrik returned to his home country every year to help run eye clinics, arranging ophthalmic treatment for those in abject poverty.
He returned from his last trip to the Punjab on March 13, 10 days before the UK government announced its plans for lockdown.
Concerned about the long journey he had just been on and his potential vulnerability because of his age, Amrik agreed he would live with his daughter in Birmingham for the coming weeks.
Despite “following all the guidance, doing everything he was supposed to”, he fell ill on April 10. Two days later, he was in hospital. And less than a fortnight after that, his grandchildren read him the Sikh version of the last rites as he lay in his hospital bed.
“He was a tremendous charitable man, an excellent athlete, a dedicated server of humanity in general and I don’t know how he fitted it all in,” Paman, an employment lawyer, told HuffPost UK.
“He also doted on...
