After a career spanning almost 50 years, GP Luc Couvreur (74) was due to retire on 31 March 2020 and permanently close his medical practice in the centre of the West Flemish town of Lendelede. It was not to be.

About a week before that farewell, he and his wife suddenly fell ill. Symptoms of the coronavirus. Doctor Couvreur spent the last year working only on Wednesdays, and March 31 would be his last working day before his final retirement after a career spanning more than 45 years. Shortly after the lockdown on 13 March, he showed coronasymptoms and on 21 March he tested positive. First, his wife was hospitalised, followed a day later by Couvreur himself. The wife made it, although according to the daughter, she was initially in the worst shape.

Doctor Couvreur ended up in intensive care and for the last two weeks he was in an artificial coma. On Monday, he passed away. According to the Domus Medica GP association, it is the very first time a GP has died from covid-19.

Doctor Couvreur was long chairman of the local Red Cross and did consultations at Kind en Gezin. His first wife was initially a nurse in Kortrijk. ‘Afterwards, my father and mother spent two years working together in a hospital in Algeria, where they mainly did deliveries’. Once back in Lendelede, he set up his own medical practice. Although he was already 74, GP Luc Couvreur continued to work one day a week in his medical practice. Because he could hardly miss his patients.