Straight from the ICU, N.B. man diagnosed with COVID-19 urges people to stay home

N.B. man shares his COVID-19 story He is in recovering after getting it while travelling and wants to warn others. Kate Walker reports.

HALIFAX — A day after being released from the intensive care unit at The Moncton Hospital, a New Brunswick man is warning others about COVID-19.

“This is something we need to treat very seriously,” Andrew Hibbert told CTV News in an exclusive interview on Thursday.

“Don’t go out unless you absolutely have to.”

The Saint-Louis-de-Kent, N.B., man spent four days in the ICU after having difficulty breathing.

“I sat on the sofa and started to vomit really badly and at that point I simply could not breathe,” said Hibbert in a FaceTime interview. “My wife had to call for the paramedic.”

Hibbert and his wife Kelly both tested positive for the virus at the end of March shortly after they returned from England.

The 56-year-old flew to England at the beginning of March to see his terminally-ill father, who died from cancer shortly after Hibbert arrived.

He told CTV News he began to lose his sense of smell and taste while overseas, but he didn’t have any other virus-related symptoms.

Both Andrew and Kelly started to feel sick shortly after they returned home. He says his wife’s symptoms included a severe fever and a cough.

Hibbert believes he was infected with the illness while waiting for a connecting flight at any one of a number of airports. The couple had stops in Moncton, Montreal, Toronto and London.

Hibbert was worried that people were too close and not physically-distancing.

“At one point, a lot of people were put onto a small bus to move from one terminal to another,” he recalled. “We were constantly in contact.”

Hibbert is at home now with his wife and they are taking different medications and trying to physically separate themselves in the house.

The couple has been retested and is waiting to see if they are still infectious.

Meanwhile, he has nothing but praise for the staff at The Moncton Hospital.

“You could see the fear in their faces because it’s new, it’s a learning curve for them,” Hibbert told CTV News.  “But by the same term, you could see they really wanted to look after people.”

Hibbert says this is not a common cold or the flu and he is urging people to follow public health instructions and practise physical-distancing.