Man who nearly died from COVID and now struggles to breath says he deserves 'punishment' for not bothering to get vaccinated

• Abderrahmane Fadi spent nine days in hospital with COVID-19, where he was "between life and death."
• He said it was "the punishment I deserve" for not getting a coronavirus vaccine.
• He said he regretted turning it down: "Why didn't I go for the vaccine? Why?"

A man almost killed by the coronavirus said he deserves "punishment" for not getting vaccinated against it.

Abderrahmane Fadi told the BBC that he had to spend nine days in a UK hospital after he was infected in June and that he now still struggles to breathe.

"I regret not having the vaccine, actually. It hits me hard, it's like a hammer in my head all the time: 'Why didn't you have the vaccine. You had all the chances, the opportunities, the appointments, the letters. Everything.'

"And I declined. And that's consequences. That's the punishment I deserve, to the honest."

The BBC journalist asked the 60-year-old science teacher if he really felt he deserved to be punished.

Fadi responded: "Why didn't I go for the vaccine? Why?"

He said that when he was fighting the virus: "I was out of breath. I was like a fish out of water. I could not even breathe, and I was thinking: 'This is it. It's my life.'"

His sons, aged nine and seven, were with him when the paramedics arrived: "They were crying."

He said they saw him on the stretcher and likely thought: "Daddy's gone forever."

He said, for the first days he was in hospital, he felt "like I was between life and death."

He credited the doctors for the fact that he is still alive today: "It wasn't easy to sustain my life. They were trying everything just to keep me alive."