Former Health Secretary and reality TV show contestant Matt Hancock has revealed the “awful” moment a Covid patient at Basildon Hospital was put on a ventilator as he visited the site.

Mr Hancock spent a night shift with the doctors at Basildon Hospital in full PPE in January 2021, which was then one of the most under-pressure hospitals in the country at the time.

A total of 719 people have died in Basildon since the start of the pandemic, with 19,992 deaths recorded across the East of England. 

Mr Hancock revealed how he heard doctors fear that the patients only had a 50 per cent chance of waking up. 

Writing exclusively in the Daily Mail, Mr Hancock said: “In intensive care, I watched a man consent to being intubated because his blood oxygen levels weren’t sustainable.

“He spoke to the doctor who said, ‘We want to put a tube in, because we don’t think you’ll make it unless we do that.’

“His chances of waking up were 50:50. He knew that. It was an unbelievably awful moment.

“He reluctantly agreed, and within a minute he was flat out on the ventilator.

“The doctor next to me said, ‘I don’t think we’ll see him again’.”

Mr Hancock says the shift left him completely drained.

Another registrar called the patient’s wife to say had been intubated, and told the then-minister: “We’re doing this, we all know it’s our duty, we’re coping with a second wave  but we can’t have a third.”

“Then he burst into tears,” Mr Hancock wrote.

The “unbelievably awful moment” happened when there were still 37,000 people in hospitals being treated for Covid.

The illness has claimed 212,000 lives in the UK.

Mr Hancock resigned from government last June for breaching his own guidance on social distancing while having an extramarital affair with an aide. 

He is now publishing a book ‘Pandemic Diaries: The Inside Story Of Britain’s Battle Against Covid’ which is being serialised in the Daily Mail. 

A spokesman for the mid and south Essex NHS Trust, which manages Basildon Hospital, said: “We confirm that Matt Hancock visited Basildon Hospital at the time, where he met staff and spoke to them about treating patients for coronavirus and how the Covid 19 vaccine programme was going.”