The Quebec government released a COVID-19 awareness campaign on Wednesday meant to show Quebecers the possible serious outcomes of contracting the virus.
The ad shows a man named Francis, not an actor but a real recovered COVID-19 patient, who speaks to the camera with a breathing tube through his throat. He tells the story of his experience with the coronavirus.
“I was at a friend’s house chatting in the doorway — nothing more mundane than that,” Francis tells the camera. “Three days later — high fever, fatigue, a hard time breathing, until I couldn’t breathe.”
He says he thought he was in great health until he fell ill with the disease. He was hospitalized for 45 days, 12 of which he spent in a coma.
According to the ad, Francis was left with a breathing tube after undergoing a tracheotomy — a medical procedure that’s either temporary or permanent that involves putting a tube into a person’s windpipe to allow air into the lungs.
“Behind the statistics, there are real people like Francis,” Quebec Premier François Legault tweeted on Wednesday along with the campaign video.