Andrew Watts, 40, has made a remarkable recovery despite nearly having his ventilator switched off during a long stay at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, southeast London. He, at one stage, could only communicate by pointing a stick at letters on a board and has had to learn to talk and walk again as he was on a ventilator in ICU (intensive care unit) for so long.

       But Andrew, who has two young children, defied all odds to walk out of the hospital this week with his family.

       Speaking to My London, the black cab driver said: "The care has been fantastic but my journey is nowhere near finished yet.

       "Going home is one major goal, but then that just starts another road in my recovery. I started walking just four weeks ago, and my next goal is to walk to my son’s school and back by Christmas."

       The father was admitted to hospital after falling ill on Christmas Day 2020 and had since spent eight months in intensive care, and then two months on a ward - a staggering 300-day stay in total.

       After a five-week induced coma and a life-threatening lung collapse, Andrew's health deteriorated to such an extent that in February, doctors called his family to tell them they were considering turning his ventilator off.

       The taxi driver, from Bexley, southeast London, was diagnosed with COVID-19 pneumonia.

       But he overcame a second lung collapse and his organs began to improve. He was able to come off the ventilator in June this year.

       "A week before Christmas 2020, I started to feel ill,” Andrew said.

       "I wasn’t eating and I was losing weight, but I thought it was just the anxiety getting to me.

       "When I was admitted to hospital with Covid I initially responded well to treatment, but then my oxygen levels started to drop and I was taken for a CT scan. That was when I was told that I had a pneuomothorax, which is a split on the lung.

       "I was on my own as this was the height of Covid, with no visitors allowed, so it was a lot to take in.

       "By this point I was crying my eyes out, on the phone to my sister Hannah and my wife Hayley, but I didn’t want to tell my mum or my dad. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them."

       Hayley and sons Jack, six, and three-year-old Joshua were able to visit in the summer but Andrew could only communicate by pointing a stick at letters on a board.

       He added: "I kept thinking 'why me?'" says Andrew.

       "It was very hard to stay positive. But I remembered how when I was going through my chemotherapy I was told to look forward, set myself little goals and when I’d achieved them set myself another one. So that’s what I did."

       The last two years have been particularly traumatic for Andrew, who was diagnosed with lymph cancer in October 2019. But chemotherapy treatment had been successful and a few months before his Covid diagnosis, he was in remission and on the mend.

       Due to being vulnerable, he spent the majority of 2020 carefully shielding.

       Many staff – doctors, nurses, physios and speech and language therapists – got to know Andrew during his stay and they lined Ward 23 to say an emotional goodbye to him this week.

       Queen Elizabeth Hospital is managed by Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust and has more than 500 beds.

       Dr Dan Harding, Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine, says: "We are all really proud and pleased that Andrew has finally been able to go home after 10 months in hospital.

       "He was one of the sickest Covid patients we’ve seen, so to see him walking out of the hospital with his family was a very happy and emotional day for me and all the other staff involved in his care."