The first British national believed to have caught coronavirus late last year has been found dead in his room at Bangor University.
Student Connor Reed, 26, caught the virus while working at a school in Wuhan, China in November 2019, and claimed he drank hot toddies to help him beat the illness.
His heartbroken mother revealed that Connor never got over the ‘hardship’ of contracting coronavirus after he was forced to spend over 20 weeks in a ‘harsh’ lockdown in China.
Police officers and paramedics were called to a student’s room at the university in North Wales last Sunday evening but Connor was pronounced dead.
The incident is not being treated as suspicious.
A North Wales Police spokesman said: ‘Shortly after 10pm on October 25, North Wales Police were requested by the ambulance service to attend at a student’s room at a Bangor University halls of residence.
‘Regrettably, despite the best efforts of friends and paramedics, a 26 year old student year male student was pronounced dead at the location.’
Writing for the Daily Mail in November, Connor described his symptoms, initially putting the illness down to a bad flu.
‘I feel dreadful. This is no longer just a cold. I ache all over, my head is thumping, my eyes are burning, my throat is constricted. The cold has travelled down to my chest and I have a hacking cough,’ he wrote at the time.
He went on to describe how he made himself a ‘hot toddy’ to help ease his symptoms. ‘I don’t smoke and I hardly ever drink. But it’s important to me to get over this cold quickly, so that I can stay healthy for work. For medicinal purposes only, I put a splash of whisky in my honey drink. I think it’s called a ‘hot toddy”,’ he wrote.