A family has been left “shattered” after an Uber driver died in hospital with his family thousands of miles away after contracting the coronavirus.
Rajesh Jayaseelan was 45 when he died on April 11, leaving behind his mother, wife Mary and boys Edwin and Kevin aged six and four in India. He is thought to have become infected from a fare.
They had to set up a video call to see him as his condition worsened before he died without any family or friends at his bedside.
He was described by close friend Sunil Kumar as the family’s only breadwinner and left them facing uncertainty – so he has set up an GoFundMe page to help.
“His family is in shatters, as they look into a very bleak future,” Sunil wrote.
“This fundraising page has been set up to help Rajesh’s family cope with this unbearable and unprecedented loss of their head of the family.”
More than £17,000 has been raised to help them out, well exceeding the target of £15,000, but Sunil admitted he will need to think of a longer-term solution to help the family.
He said Rajesh, who is from Bangalore, moved to London nearly 10 years ago to make a better life for his family, which lives in India.
Sunil, who knew Rajesh for eight years, said the Uber driver admitted himself to Northwick Park Hospital on April 3 after falling ill.
Rajesh, he said, was a “really good guy, very down to earth, humble and he never went out to cause any harm”.
“He was a really good man, quiet, disciplined and kept himself to himself and he would go out of his way to help his friends.”
He believes “hardworking” Rajesh became infected on an Uber shift.
“Most of his work was around Heathrow airport,” Sunil, a 38-year-old IT worker for the NHS, told Yahoo News UK.
“I think the only trips he got (after lockdown) were mostly Heathrow trips, so he would have come across someone who was positive who took a ride in his car and he would’ve contracted it from them.”
During his time in hospital, Rajesh avoided calling his family in case they worried.