A British ICU doctor described seeing her patients regret not getting vaccinated: 'You can see it dawn on them'

• A British ICU doctor says the "vast majority" of her COVID-19 patients have been "completely unvaccinated."
• Samantha Batt-Rawden told The Guardian that many regret not getting the jab after they wind up hospitalized.
• "You can see it dawn on them that they potentially made the biggest mistake of their lives," she said.

A British ICU doctor says the "vast majority" of COVID-19 patients she's treated were "completely unvaccinated," adding that many of them have said they regret not being inoculated after they wind up hospitalized.

"You can see it dawn on them that they potentially made the biggest mistake of their lives [in not getting the coronavirus vaccine], which is really hard," Samantha Batt-Rawden, a senior intensive care doctor, told The Guardian in a report published Monday.

Batt-Rawden, the president of the Doctors' Association UK, noted that she has overheard her patients telling family members of their sorrow for not getting the potentially life-saving coronavirus vaccine.

The doctor explained that families of the coronavirus patients often ask whether anything could have been done to have prevented their loved one from contracting the infectious disease.

"You know that there is something that the patient could have had which would have meant their life is not at risk, and it is a question we get asked a lot," Batt-Rawden said referring to the available COVID-19 vaccines.

Read more: How anti-vaxxers are engineering a wave of legal battles to fight mandatory workplace Covid jabs

Batt-Rawden added, "The side-effects are mild … Listen to doctors who work in intensive care, because we are heartbroken every day and don't want you to end up here."

The UK has experienced a recent surge in coronavirus infections as the highly transmissible Delta variant of COVID-19 spreads throughout the country, as well as globally.