A grandmother claims she intends to sue a Welsh health board over the death of her husband who contracted Covid while at work. Gareth Roberts died in hospital in Merthyr Tydfil on April 11, 2020, aged 65 after catching Covid while working as a bank nurse at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff in March 2020.
His widow Linda Roberts, 76, said Gareth should have been risk assessed. Mrs Roberts said assessments would have shown that her late husband suffered with type two diabetes and shouldn’t have been working on a Covid ward.
In an inquest into Mr Roberts’ death last month coroner Graeme Hughes concluded that he died as a result of industrial disease – a potentially pioneering outcome. But Mr Hughes said Mr Roberts’ age, sex, and health would not have triggered the need for the health board to carry out an individual risk assessment.
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Mrs Roberts said her husband had been working to provide for their grandson Zac Roberts, now 19, and to ensure he could go to university in September this year to study music. The couple won custody of Zac after both of Zac’s parents died. Mrs Roberts said the court process left them with very little financially and meant Mr Roberts felt he had little choice to work into his older age. At the start of the pandemic she said her husband felt he had a duty to go to work despite the risks but she believes he was let down when he was there.
“We went through the courts to get Zac and it really broke us because every time we went to court it was £1,200 to £1,500 a throw,” she said. “We had no more and that’s why Gareth went back [to work]. He did it to support Zac and myself. More than anything he worked to make sure Zac would have a good life and he will have a good life – he’s a great musician and a generally nice lad. It is a mark of the man Gareth was [that he returned to work despite the dangers posed by Covid].
“I tried to talk him out of working with Covid around. I said to him: ‘Let’s have some time away, a week or a fortnight.’ But he said: ‘No I can’t.’ That was him. He’d leave at six in the morning and be home at eight at night. He did it all while being worried about Covid and I was really worried – it scared me to death.”
Mr Roberts contracted Covid in March during the same week the UK went into a strict lockdown. He was admitted to hospital on April 2 and died nine days later.
“They rang me in the early hours and told me I needed to get to the hospital,” Mrs Roberts, from Aberdare, explained. “I said I didn’t think there was any point because they wouldn’t let me see him but they did. I was the first [visitor] they allowed in and they wrapped me up in protective paraphernalia. If he’d have been dressed in that he would have been in God’s pocket.”
At the time that Mr Roberts caught Covid he was wearing gloves, an apron, and a face mask to work. A spokesman for the Cardiff and Vale University Health Board said he was a “very valued member of the health board and nursing profession”.
They said: “As a health board we reiterate our sincere condolences to Mrs Roberts. It is appreciated that this remains a very distressing time for the family. Mr Roberts was a very valued member of the health board and nursing profession. We will await further correspondence from the family's legal representative and will respond accordingly.”
Mrs Roberts, who was also a nurse, described Mr Roberts as a “generous and lovable person”. She said: “I was married to him for 45 years. We met on the bus to work and that was it – we started travelling together every day. He was a lovely man, a most generous and lovable person. He was so dedicated to nursing.”
She said she was “elated” at the inquest conclusion and enthused by the idea that her case could "give a voice" to people who contracted Covid while at work. “Not only nurses – also bus drivers and many, many others who died after catching it at work. Hopefully this shows something could be done about it and to at least recognise it. I don’t care about the money – I’ve never had a lot of money in my life and I don’t need it but I hope the case at least wakes people up.”
Lawyers for the Royal College of Nursing said they have about 70 similar claims by nurses and their families ongoing. Mrs Roberts added that if she did successfully sue the NHS she would use the money to support Zac at university.
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