“That crucial week made all the difference to him,” she said. “He came down with symptoms on March 22 2020, which was the day before lockdown.”
[Missing Credit]
Because he was over 70, his workplace, Muswell Hill Golf Club – he was an avid golfer – had already told him to stop coming into work. He followed government instructions such as washing his hands.
“He had rheumatoid arthritis, which, at the time, we didn’t know was a pre-existing condition that put him at risk. Had we known that, we would have protected him more.”
But as far as he knew, he was not vulnerable. “He went to Brent Cross a few days before he got sick and came down with symptoms. Did he pick it up there? We will never know.”
At first, the advice from the NHS 111 was to stay at home and take paracetamol, but that proved “catastrophic”. When a doctor friend of her brother advised them what to say, they returned to the helpline; an ambulance was dispatched and on examination, he was immediately taken to hospital.
After he died, “we weren’t able to have a proper funeral; we weren’t able to have a shivah, so you were robbed of all of those rituals that are so important. We had shivah on Zoom, which was utterly bizarre.”
At the cemetery, “we weren’t allowed to go up to the graveside which was also weird, so we weren’t able to throw earth on his coffin. We weren’t able to see his coffin lowered - we didn’t have that final closure.”
What now feels “unforgivable” is that the government “made the same mistakes again the second and third time,” she said. “They didn’t listen, they didn’t learn.”
Rivka Gottlieb (back row, second from left) with her family, including her parents, Michael and Mili Gottlieb (Photo: courtesy)[Missing Credit]
Already at the end of the first lockdown in June 2020, the newly formed Covid-19 group was calling for a “rapid review inquiry. During that lull in the summer we said now is the time to examine what’s going on, what went wrong… And they didn’t listen. And the second wave was even worse.”
Last month’s report by the inquiry, which started investigating in summer 2022, was the second into a projected 10 areas, with the final set of public hearings due early next year. “It’s dragged on but the end is in sight,” she said.
When the first report was issued, into how prepared the nation was to cope with a pandemic, the Covid-19 group felt the recommendations did not go far enough and produced some of its own, which have been taken up by government. It is similarly combing through the latest report and if it detects any gaps, it will not hesitate to fill them in.
“The government has just carried out an exercise in pandemic preparedness, which they have actually consulted with us on,” she said. “It would never have happened before. The fact that we have been noisy and pushy – this government has been receptive and is listening – is positive.”
With a raft of other reports due out, there is much work still to be done. “I am particularly interested in the healthcare module because of the way the hospitals were run, the NHS 111 service was run,” she said. “I had friends who lost family members in care homes. So that’s going to be really important to a lot of people.”
The group is also backing the Hillsborough Law Now campaign, launched by victims of the 1989 football ground tragedy, which wants to prevent cover-ups after disasters and ensure that authorities assist in the excavation of the truth.
For Rivka, the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK has been a significant outlet. “I’ve channelled my anger into doing something, into constructive action.
Rivka Gottlieb speaking at the Covid memorial wall in London (Photo: courtesy)[Missing Credit]
Through this process, I have met some incredible people. What we share, what we have in common is our loss, but all of us believe that we don’t want this to happen to other people. We believe change is necessary, and for us, the campaign is about this never happening again.”
She is not the only member of the community to have played a prominent role in Covid activism. Ondine Sherwood, who died of cancer in March this year aged 65, was a co-founder of Long Covid SOS.
Five years on, it is sometimes forgotten that some two million people have long Covid, Rivka points out, among them her own mother, Mili, who contracted it while looking after Rivka’s father.
“That’s another reason why, for me, it is important to keep campaigning - because I can see what the risks are. Even if you survive, there is still the risk of long Covid, which can be debilitating and devastating for a family.”
