Kate Garraway’s husband Derek Draper still faces “challenges every week” after contracting coronavirus
Image Source/ Sky News
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The 53-year-old presenter has been in limbo since Derek was put into an induced coma after contracting the virus in March, and although he is now awake and free from the virus, he remains in a critical condition.
Speaking on Good Morning Britain, Kate said:
‘He’s very much still with us but there seems to be different challenges every week’.
Derek, 52, remains in hospital after coming out of a coma last month.
Kate previously said:
‘He has damage everywhere, holes in his heart, his liver is impacted, and his pancreas… well, he’s now very, very diabetic which he wasn’t before.
‘He’s been on kidney dialysis because his kidneys stopped functioning. And his nerves and his neurology have been affected by the virus, but the impact and the damage of that, they don’t yet know’.
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Kate has offered to donate her blood plasma – which is now being encouraged by the NHS and the government – after she was struck down with a mild form of coronavirus.
She said:
‘Something I saw which intrigued me was this call out from the government for people to come forward to donate blood, so they can make use of blood plasma. Those who have had COVID and recovered.
‘When Derek was very seriously affected by the virus – as in the virus was active, not as he is now – towards the end of April, I was looking for anything that might be able to help.
‘I said to the doctors, “Could I donate my blood? I’ve had it, I seem to have recovered. Would antibodies that I have be helpful to him?”
‘They said, “We are months away from being able to be confident that we could, in a sense, clean your blood enough to make sure that only the good antibodies were going in.”
‘We know plasma has been really helpful now. And more recently, Derek has had plasma exchanged, to try to support the cleaning up of the system’.
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