Windsor based author and historian Doctor Brigitte Mitchell and her husband Geoff have both fallen victim to the Covid virus.

Doctor Mitchell, 79 is chairman of Windsor Local History Group and deputy chairman of the Friends of Windsor Museum.

She took Geoff, 89, for his first Covid jab at the Salt Hill Park Community Centre at Slough on December 18. But it was already too late.

She said: "Geoff felt unwell two days after his jab with flu type aches and just wanted to sleep. I started feeling unwell on Christmas Eve. We ached all over and were off our food, but struggled through till Boxing Day when I rang 111. A doctor came and left a prescription for antibiotics.

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"The following morning I felt worse, with sickness and diarrhoea. 111 sent an ambulance; the very young team was magnificent, efficient and caring. They took me to Wexham Park Hospital. A swab established COVID pneumonitis."

She was able to go home. But on New Year's Day they both struggled to breathe and were taken to Wexham Park by ambulance.

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Doctor Mitchell said: "Geoff went home again on January 3.

"We spoke on the phone in the evening, but next morning I could not get a reply. By 11 am I alerted a neighbour with a key, but the police had to be called as Geoff had put the security chain on. They found him in bed semiconscious. He had a stroke and was unable to speak. This time the ambulance took five hours to arrive.

"He is now making good progress at Wexham, and I have been resting and recovering at home since Friday, January 8.

"The experience has left me with the highest admiration for the staff at Wexham Park Hospital. Everybody, from the porters to the consultants, was super efficient, caring, kind and ever helpful. Not once did they let their ‘masks’ slip to show the relentless pressure they were under, the patients always came first, second and last."

Doctor Mitchell says she wants to show her appreciation by making a £500 donation to the hospital to be used as the Frimley Park trust that runs it wishes.

She hopes others will follow her example.

She is currently busy working on a book about Windsor during the Second World War - which she is writing with fellow historian Derek Hunt.