WATCH: NHS staff in standing ovation for fellow Derry frontline worker Danny Ogle as he leaves ICU after COVID-19 battle

Altnagelvin Hospital porter and actor Danny had been working on the frontline when he developed symptoms.

His son Danny Patrick said his father had initially noticed a high temperature and was ill for about a week before things took a turn for the worse.

“After he developed symptoms he was told to isolate and then he went and got tested and that confirmed he had it.”

Last Friday Danny was admitted to the hospital where he works and on Monday he was taken into the Intensive Care Unit.

While Danny didn’t have to go on a ventilator his condition became extremely serious earlier this week, and his wife and children, unable to visit because of the coronavirus pandemic precautions, were praying and hoping for the best in their homes.

“The disease really took hold in ICU,” Danny Patrick said. “He was very breathless and wasn’t eating, which we know is not like him, but the NHS staff were brilliant and they really looked after him, as they do for everybody, and got him through it.”

To everyone’s relief, the 68-year-old Galliagh man and father of six, who is well known throughout the city and beyond for his charity work and good natured humour, rallied well enough to come out of ICU on Wednesday, and staff lined the corridor to applaud him as he was wheeled out.

It was a day his relatives feared might never come, and like many other families they had the awful experience of not being able to visit or comfort their father as he went through his battle against COVID-19, not knowing if he would survive it.

“It was brilliant to hear he was out of ICU and it was amazing to see those lovely people giving him that tribute.”

London-based screenwriter and film-maker Danny Patrick, whose father has acted in many of his movies alongside the likes of Martin Kemp and Mike Reid, said an extremely troubling part of this was dealing with the fact that not only might they lose their father but that they and others would not get the chance to come together and pay their respects or give him the send off he would have otherwise had.

Danny Patrick said: “My Da went to everybody’s wake. He knew everybody and enjoyed seeing everyone, and I was thinking it would be terrible if the worse was to happen and he didn’t get his own wake. We wouldn’t be able to have that celebration of life, and this has already happened to so many people because of this terrible disease.

“Derry as a rule always celebrates people’s lives and wakes and funerals are a big part of that.”

Thankfully for the Ogle family, it hasn’t come to that. “Overall we feel incredible blessed, incredibly lucky that my Da, given his age, ha has managed to get through this.”

Danny Patrick added: “People are catching this disease and it can affect anybody- it catches up with rich or poor, young or old, people of all different backgrounds; it doesn’t understand class, creed or colour.

Danny’s son described the NHS staff working at Altnagelvin and elsewhere as “amazing, wonderful and brave - ordinary people doing a very, very brave job, going on to the frontline knowing there is a hell of a chance of picking it up themselves.”

Danny Patrick added that his family were comforted by and very grateful for the many, many messages of support and tributes that Danny has received.

And while it might be a while before Danny is back out and about again, for those missing him they can now see him starring in the movies he and has son helped create, including Requiem for a Fighter, Moussaka and Chips and The Best Years, which are all now available to watch free for those on Amazon Prime.

Let’s hope Danny Ogle will be back up and at himself in person soon. Get well soon Danny!