Kate Garraway, a host on ITV’s national breakfast show “Good Morning Britain,” said she “fears the reality” of giving up her job to care full-time for her husband, Derek Draper.
The 53-year-old former lobbyist and political author contracted Covid-19 a year ago and has since suffered organ failure.
In a documentary that aired on ITV on Tuesday, Garraway, also 53, detailed the severity of his condition and spoke to others who have experienced serious cases of “long Covid.”
“Derek’s is an extreme case. Unless you are up close to it, you don’t know what it’s like,” she said in the film, “Finding Derek.” “Is he going to be able to come back, or will he be alive, but no longer the person he was?”
The broadcast shone a light on the most severe cases of Covid-19, and the subsequent complications it can cause even in younger people.
“Derek is an extreme case. What he had is what is called a prolonged disorder of consciousness, which means that there is some reaction,” Garraway told the BBC on Tuesday, shortly before the documentary aired.
“You are on this precipice trying to hold on to him and there are moments when he bubbles up and you have some contact, predominantly at the moment on FaceTime because of the Covid restrictions,” she said.
A number of British TV personalities shared messages of support after the program aired.
Garraway was seen preparing her home for Draper’s potential return from hospital, and shared footage of her husband unconscious in the hospital.
“Derek is the sickest person the team of doctors in the lung hospital have treated that’s lived,” Garraway said.
The pair married in 2005 and have two children, who both appeared in the documentary.
In one scene, Garraway tells her 11-year-old son: “You know that we are hoping that dad will get better and better, but when he comes home he will probably need to be in a wheelchair.”
Garraway has co-hosted “Good Morning Britain” since it debuted in 2014, and has also appeared on British competition shows “Strictly Come Dancing” and “I’m A Celebrity: Get Me Out of Here.”