UPDATE: with statement Taipei Medical University Hospital, 05:10 p.m.

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — An Australian student had left intensive care at a hospital in Taiwan after allegedly inadvertently ingesting rat poison, reports said Saturday (April 29).

Alex Shorey, 24, had been studying for a year at Tamkang University in New Taipei City when he woke up one morning earlier this month covered in blood, his relatives told website news.com.au. After several visits to the hospital, he was admitted into intensive care at Taipei Medical University Hospital, where he was suffering from severe symptoms.

Shorey was unable to return to Australia on a commercial flight, as fluid on his lungs after an anaphylactic episode required high pressure oxygen treatment and a specialized medical flight service. In just three days, his relatives raised more than A$200,000 (NT$4 million, US$132,000) to fund his flight home to the Australian state of Queensland.

On their GoFundMe page, they wrote the special flight had been booked and was being prepared Saturday, after three earlier flights were canceled due to his deteriorating condition. “Alex will soon be on his way home to receive the ongoing care he needs,” Shorey’s relatives wrote.

Due to a delay in coming to the right diagnosis, his organs had been severely damaged, while he also suffered cardiorespiratory collapse on April 24, making a quick recovery unlikely, his relatives said.

The student was just weeks away from ending his studies and returning to his home town of Toowoomba when he ingested the rat poison, identified as Super Warfarin, UDN reported. According to his aunt, Elizabeth Shorey-Kitson, the inadvertent poisoning might have occurred via contaminated food from a street market, the report said.

However, later Saturday, Taipei Medical University Hospital issued a statement saying Shorey had left intensive care, where he had been admitted due to an adverse allergic reaction to earlier medicine, UDN reported. As his treatment had been adjusted, he was able to move out of intensive care Friday (April 28), according to the hospital.

The statement also said that Shorey told them his poisoning had probably nothing to do with street food, though he was unable to tell how he might have been exposed to rat poison.