A retired Jewish lawyer has returned home after contracting Covid-19 in the first weeks of the pandemic - after spending 306 days in hospital.

Geoffrey Woolf, 74,was rushed to hospital last March after collapsing over breakfast– and at one point during the summer his three sons were told to say their goodbyes to him as his condition deteriorated further.

Discharged from hospital on Thursday, he is believed to have spent the longest time in hospital of any patient to have survived the virus.

After initially being taken to an intensive care unit at the Whittington Hospital in North London, he has been undergoing treatment at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability in Putney in London for the brain damage caused by the virus.

It also caused paralysis down one side of his body, and aphasia.

“The staff and carers at the hospital have been amazing. And also the staff at the Whittington,” Mr Woolf told the Guardian on Thursday.

He said a return to his home in Holloway meant “freedom”.

Mr Woolf’s son said of his father’s return home: “It’s been a heck of a fight.

“His first joke was that he chose quite a difficult way of skipping the last year of the Trump administration, but that it was still probably worth it.”

The Guardian revealed Mr Woolf had been studying for a degree in art history at London’s City Lit adult education college, having retired shortly before contracting the virus.

He had no underlying health conditions and his sudden collapse had come out of the blue.

Doctors who first saw him after his sons dialled 999 on 23 March suspected he had meningitis.