Petra Fleming will turn 54 next year. That is not usually considered a milestone birthday but for her it carries huge emotional significance: it's the age her brother was when he died of Covid during the pandemic.
"In terms of impact, it really threw us into family trauma. You can't hug each other, just FaceTime, it's very unnatural, very surreal. It's a very unique situation, which could have been completely avoided with more competent politicians. They failed spectacularly," she said.
Sharing her story at the publication of the first report from the UK Covid-19 inquiry, she underlined its importance: "I hope other people don't have to go through the same thing that myself and my family went through.
Whatever we can do in the future to ensure this doesn't happen again we will do." Fleming is a member of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK and, like many others, she has mixed feelings about the report's content.
This story is from the July 26, 2024 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
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This story is from the July 26, 2024 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
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