Coronavirus Australia: 54yo Sydney man from famous ICU picture spent 103 days in hospital

A man who became the face of Sydney’s Covid outbreak after a confronting picture showing him in intensive care signalled the Delta strain was ravaging the community has opened up about his battle. 

After a mammoth 103 days in hospital John Robinson has returned home but still suffers from coughing fits where he struggles to breath, has scarring on his lungs and has lost his sense of taste and smell. 

The photos of Mr Robinson in hospital in July were a wake-up call to Australia – which had not at that point experienced the seriousness of the virus first-hand – and helped kickstart the vaccine rollout in NSW. 

He has now revealed that a fellow tradesmen from the city’s eastern suburbs, where the monster outbreak began, had ‘snuck out’ to work with him while unknowingly infected with the virus – a decision which nearly claimed his colleague’s life. 

The 54-year-old said he was shocked at how the virus had floored him within a matter of days as he was previously fit and healthy, doing physically demanding road construction work.  

But he has no recollection of his ICU fight for survival, telling A Current Affair he was ‘too far gone to even know’. 

Doctors have since told him the good state of his heart and lungs was likely what saved his life.

He said he now he finds it hard to to look at the pictures of himself struggling to get air as they remind him just how close he was to not leaving the ward. 

‘There’s just a lot of death around you… and you don’t want to be there. It didn’t feel good. Didn’t feel safe in there,’ Mr Robinson said. 

‘I don’t want my grandkids to look at me like that, in that way… that’s why I can’t look at it now,’ he added. 

Despite leaving hospital, Mr Robinson says he can only work for a short time before he has to stop and he has lost his sense of smell and taste 

Mr Robinson spent 103 days in hospital and had to learn how to walk again after six weeks in a coma (pictured) 

He was exposed to the virus after a colleague on his road gang turned up at work while sick. 

‘A fella from the eastern suburbs, he come out from where he wasn’t meant to. And I asked him, I said, “what are you doing here?” And he said, “I snuck out”. He said, “don’t tell no-one”.’ 

Mr Robinson on the day he returned home 

He first felt ill on July 6 but thought he just had a light flu which he would easily shake off. 

‘The Monday night I worked, and I got really crook Monday night. And I rang them up on Tuesday and said, “I won’t be in because I don’t want to give what I’ve got to any of the other workers”.’ 

Two days later on July 8 he and his wife Pam were moved to a medi-hotel to quarantine away from the rest of their family. 

But by July 11 he was so sick he was rushed to St Vincent’s Hospital where his recollection stops. 

On July 14 he was put on a ventilator. 

‘He rang and said, “I’m getting ventilated soon”, so he actually rang and said goodbye. So that was the hard bit,’ his tearful wife revealed. 

He spent the next six weeks in an induced coma on a ventilator and when he was woken up he literally ‘couldn’t move’, his muscles wasted from a lack of movement and oxygen. 

His wife Pam (pictured together) said she is just grateful to have her husband back 

His lengthy rehabilitation is still going and food ‘all taste the same’.

‘The doctors don’t seem to think it’s going to be before six months to 18 months (to get back full movement). And my lungs are never going to get back to 100 per cent,’ he said. 

‘When I think about how he was, I’m just happy to have him back,’ his wife added.