Kate Garraway reveals husband Derek Draper is covid-free — but virus has caused 'extraordinary damage'
Kate Garraway has appeared on Good Morning Britain for the first time since her husband Derek Draper was hospitalised with coronavirus.
The presenter, 53, shared an update on Draper’s health on Thursday morning revealing that while he is now coronavirus-free, he continues to face a huge health battle.
At the start of the videolink interview, she told Ranvir Singh and Ben Shephard: “There will be tears, by the way, I will try to keep them in.”
Addressing Draper’s health, she continued: “He’s very, very sick and as time goes on it’s a virus, it’s a little bit like a computer virus, the doctors manage one bit extraordinarily well and there seems to be hope and then there is something else.
“It’s affected him from the top of his head to the tip of his toes.”
Revealing that Draper, 52, is now “covid-free [and] testing negative”, Garraway continued: “The fight with the virus has been won and he’s still here but it’s wreaked extraordinary damage on his body and we don’t know if he can recover from that.
“One doctor said to me he’s the worst affected person he’s had to treat that has lived, thank God he’s lived so far.”
Draper was placed into a medically induced coma after being hospitalised with coronavirus in March.
Garraway revealed she was encouraged by her colleague Piers Morgan to treat Draper’s illness like a breaking news story and gather all the information she could and get to work helping him.
She said: “That gave me a job, that gave me that breaking news mode when something awful happens and you have to not think about the emotion of it.
“I think about two weeks ago I probably did crash because you can’t stay like that forever and the problem is I have huge hope and massive positivity and will never give up on that because Derek is the core of my life, but I have absolute uncertainty and the doctors don’t know because they have never seen this before.”
Throughout her family’s ordeal, Garraway has shared updates on Instagram after each week’s Clap for Carers.
For the first time since the start of lockdown, the Thursday night applause did not take place this week but Garraway and her two children, Billy and Darcy, still paused for a moment of appreciation.
Additional reporting by Press Association
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