‘How I Survived Coronavirus’ – UK-Based Nigerian Nurse Speaks


A UK based-Nigerian nurse, May Toba has revealed how she survived Coronavirus.

Toba who lives in South-East London said it started with a temperature.

Read excerpts from her interview.

“I was having a bit of temperature; I own a thermometer, so I checked myself and found that it was 38.4. Usually, temperature is supposed to be between 35 and 37.5. I checked the first day, took paracetamol; I kept monitoring it daily and it kept increasing.

“The next day, I decided to go shopping with my son. I didn’t isolate because, to be honest, I was in denial that it could be Coronavirus. I thought it was common cold and general body weakness. By this time, people in London were panic-buying. Everybody was rushing to buy tissues and other things. So, I went shopping with my son, so that if London shuts down over the weekend, we would have food at home.

“I live in South-East London, so as we got to Woolich, I was short of breath and also couldn’t walk long distance without stopping to sit somewhere.

When we got home, I asked my son to offload the things we bought, that I needed to go to the hospital because I was having signs of COVID-19.


I drove down to the hospital where I work. I work in Accident and Emergency and we are the front-liners. Everything comes through our doors.

“On getting there, my colleague said to me: ‘May, you should know better. These are flu-like symptoms. Why don’t you just stay at home for seven days instead of coming to the hospital?’ I told her I wasn’t feeling right at all and that if I was, I wouldn’t come to the hospital.

“Being that I work in the hospital, they rushed me straight, took my samples, and did all my blood tests and x-rays. The COVID-19 test takes 48 hours before the result comes out. They started diagnosing it through the patient’s x-ray. When they do your chest x-ray, they can see from your lungs if there’s fluid in the lungs.

They detected fluid in my lungs and saw that it had started collapsing already. The doctor immediately told me that he’s going to intubate me and place me on a ventilator to allow my lungs rest. I agreed and was injected. That was the last I knew of what happened until four days later.

“According to my colleagues, I was incubated and sent to ICU. I woke up four days later and was told the water in my lungs had already dried up and the blood test had become better. They did another swab and it was negative, that’s how I was discharged.

Toba said she probably contracted it from patients with COVID-19 that she attended to with proper dressing around the 13th of March.

She is, however, grateful that she didn’t die while trying to save others.





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