British actor Rory Kinnear has revealed that his sister Karina has passed away after a brief battle with coronavirus.
In a column for The Guardian, the 44-year-old actor said that Karina died in a hospital after testing positive forCOVID-19 last week. She was 48.
Due to the social distancing guidelines, Kinnear said the family bid their goodbyes to her over FaceTime and the telephone.
"Iplayed Karina one of her favourite songs and told her how proud I was to have been her brother and what gratitude I felt for what she had taught me about life.
"We had wanted to be with her together as a family and, under lockdown conditions and knowing my mother's strengths lie in areas other than navigating Zoom meetings it was as good as we could have hoped," he added.
Kinnear said Karina battled health problems since her birth when she was left severely disabled after suffering a lack of oxygen that caused severe brain damage.
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She became paralysed from the waist down aged 19 following a lifesaving operation on her spine. She also suffered kidney damage after a battle with sepsis in 2014.
"And yet every time, when you thought she couldn't possibly take any more, she defied us. Along with my mother's ferocious determination to keep her alive, she defied medicine, she defied doctors, she defied prognoses, she defied the capacity of human endurance.
"And she would look at you and smile, as if to say: 'Yep. I did it again'. She was heroic and continually inspiring. In fact she had a daredevil's spirit, forever finding joy in activities many might have shied away from," the actor said.
He added that Karina hadn't visited hospital for once in the past 18 months.
"It was coronavirus that killed her. It wasn't her 'underlying conditions'. Prior to her diagnosis, she hadn't been in hospital for 18 months an unusually care-free period for Karina.
"No, it was a virulent, aggressive and still only partially understood virus that was responsible, a virus that is causing thousands of people, despite the unstinting bravery of the medical staff of this country, to say a distanced goodbye to relatives who would still be alive had they not contracted it," Kinnear said.
The actor hoped that the pandemic would make people realise about the safety of those "most in need of our care and compassion", as it is making their lives "harder" and "even more fearful".