There’s a cheery voice cutting through the whirr of machine noises in Warrington Hospital ICU.

It’s Donna Wall. The last time we saw her, she had been clinging to life, fighting for every breath.

“Hello Alex!” she calls out. Certainly, it’s a dramatic change.

Now, any voice in ICU is pretty unusual. These are the most seriously ill patients requiring 24-hour care, who are often on life support.

You certainly don’t expect a jolly salutation from any of the patients in there.

The medical teams all around the unit are creating a background hum of quietly spoken messages and communications, made through plastic visors and face masks shielding them from the deadly virus.

The patients all around Donna are silent, aside from the occasional moan.

There are several awake but quiet. Some are on ventilators. Others are being tended to by physios or having their vital signs checked on monitors.

Donna is sitting, propped up by pillows in her intensive care bed, her hair washed and cleaned, looking through the messages on her phone.

It’s just days after she was featured in a Sky News report and she told us: “I don’t want to be a statistic”.

She has two boys at home – four-year-old Frankie and 13-year-old Charlie.

Since we last saw her, she’s had messages from friends and family as well as school pals she hasn’t heard from in years.

“Apparently Piers Morgan tweeted about me,” she tells us cheerily, “And someone called Andy Burnham?”

Andy Burnham is the former Labour health secretary from 2009 to 2010, now mayor of Greater Manchester.

“It’s been amazing. I feel so much better,” she says.

The ICU team tells us she’s been asking where the Sky News team is. “I want to show them how much better I am,” she tells them.

And she is.

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