THE Health Secretary has described having coronavirus as a “pretty unpleasant experience” as he promised further action on testing.
Matt Hancock said he has now fully recovered from the “nasty” illness, which saw him suffer sleepless nights and an “incredibly” sore throat.
He said Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has “been working throughout” after he also tested positive for the virus, is a “bit under the weather” but is also “up and about and on the Zoom conference calls a huge amount, and on the phone”.
Of his own symptoms, Hancock said: “It was a pretty unpleasant experience, I went downhill on Thursday last week and for a couple of nights it was very hard to sleep, incredibly painful throat, it was like having glass in my throat.”
He said he had also suffered a “bit of a cough” and lost half a stone in weight.
It comes as the John Hopkins University in the US, which is tracking the global picture, said Covid-19 cases have now passed one million across the world.
Meanwhile, Walsall nurse Areema Nasreen, who was in intensive care on a ventilator after testing positive for the virus, has died, friends have said.
A close friend of the 36-year-old mother-of-three, who worked at Walsall Manor Hospital, paid tribute to her on social media.
Fellow nurse Rubi Aktar said: “I am so broken that words can’t explain. I can’t believe I will not see your smile again.”
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Hancock said it is unclear whether he is now immune to Covid-19.
“I took advice on that and the advice is it’s highly likely that I am now immune, or have a very high level of immunity,” he said.
“But it’s not certain.
“And so, like everybody else who has been through it, I am social distancing, just like everybody else.
“We have a stream of work under way… on immunity, with, potentially, having immunity certificates, so that if people have been through it, and when the science is clear about the point at which they are then immune, that people can then start getting back to normal even more because they have been through it.
“One of the big challenges in this is to know how long immunity lasts for.”
Mr Hancock said the virus is expected to peak in the UK in the next few weeks, adding: “It’s very, very sensitive to how many people follow the social distancing guidelines.”
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