A BASINGSTOKE nurse has posted an emotional video pleading the public to stay home amid the rise in coronavirus cases.

The video, which was posted on Hampshire Hospitals Foundation Trusts (HHFT)  twitter page, showed Prashanth Venugopal begging the public to follow guidelines.

The band 5 nurse, who works on ward E1, moved to England in December 2019.

Within a few months, he was thrown into the middle of the pandemic and has now been treating Covid patients for almost a year.

Prashanth started the video praising his colleagues: “I’m incredibly proud of my teammates in E1 we have been going through immense trauma, suffering and pain.

“We have seen it all. We have seen people losing their loved ones, we have seen people who would had been celebrating their birthdays in a couple of weeks or who had been waiting for their next grandchild to be born and then all of a sudden they get struck down by this virus.

“And we hope they get well and go back home, but the next day you come in see that they’ve got poorly and are on ventilators and then they go down the road.

“We’ve been through it all and we’ve just got one thing to say please, please, please stay at home”

Prashanth hopes by sharing his experience of COVID-19 it will remind the public why it is vital to follow the government guidelines and stay home.

He says the pandemic is much worse than anyone could imagine.

“If you are still in doubt just make yourself available to be on the wards just for an hour and you will see.”

“You will see the difficulty in taking each breath. You will see the difficulty people face losing their loved ones without being able to be there to hold their hands.

“So please no more claps, no donations, just nothing but stay home.”