Vegan Who Rejected COVID-19 Vaccine Over Animal Testing Dies Of Virus

A 54-year-old vegan man in England who refused COVID-19 jabs because they were tested on animals has died from the virus.

Glynn Steel, of Malvern, died on Nov. 16 following a two-week battle in intensive care, the Birmingham Mail reported. The field service engineer had been planning to retire early with his wife Emma on his 55th birthday, which was just two months away, according to the outlet.

Steel tested positive for the coronavirus on Oct. 27. His condition deteriorated rapidly, and less than a week after being diagnosed, his wife took him to Worcestershire Royal Hospital, where he was admitted to intensive care, a report by Yahoo News said.

Steel was put on life support and in an induced coma on Nov. 10 and died a week after that.

"I was there when they turned off the life support. I had to wear the full PPE kit, including a suction face mask with the visor on top and two pairs of gloves, so I couldn’t touch him or kiss him. He died within 20 minutes, and they played his favorite music by the Sex Pistols as he died," Steel's wife Emma was quoted as saying by the Birmingham Mail.

Steel initially refused COVID-19 jabs because "he was vegan, and [the vaccines] were tested on animals," Emma explained.

He also "wanted to wait and see what the side-effects of the jabs were in the long term," his wife added.

Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, which were granted emergency authorization use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, all conducted animal trials for their COVID-19 vaccines and had no significant safety concerns to report, Reuters reported.

Despite his beliefs, Steel later begged nurses to give him a vaccine when he was in intensive care, but it was too late, his wife said.

"The last thing Glynn said to me was 'I have never felt so ill, I wish that I had had the vaccine.' It was heart-wrenching," she recalled.

Emma, who received two vaccine doses and the booster earlier this year, urged others to get their COVID-19 jabs as soon as they can.

Steel's niece, Charlotte Steel, launched a GoFundMe page to help raise money for his funeral. It has raised £1,150 ($1,530) as of this writing.

The U.K. has reported more than 10.2 million COVID-19 cases and 145,218 deaths, according to the latest data provided by John Hopkins University.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced new measures Saturday to slow the spread of the newly identified Omicron coronavirus variant — three cases of which have been detected in the country.