Coronavirus-infected GPs chief shares unusual tip on what to buy before COVID-19 strikes

Speaking to Matt Frei on LBC, the former chair of the Council of the Royal College of GPs said she believes to have contracted coronavirus in New York, where she was for a conference. Dr Gerada summed up the disease as feeling “like the flu but longer”. She said: “For the vast majority of people is a horrible illness and you get through it at the other end.

“Hopefully I’m now immune, I suspect I’ve got more immunity than not having had it.

“And hopefully, I’ll be able to get back to helping my colleagues look after you lot when you get it.

“And I’ll be the one that can do the home visits and see all of you with your normal illnesses that you’re still going to have and still going to be needed to be seen.”

Asked about the first symptom she felt that urged her to get tested for COVID-19, she replied: “The fever, the absolute fever.

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“And with the fever comes what we call rigours, which are hot and cold terrible drenching sweats where you wet your pyjamas.

“I anyone needs to go an buy anything, go and buy some spare pyjamas.

“Your pyjamas get absolutely soaked.”

She added: “You should drink lots of water constantly to keep re-hydrated but when you’re sick you don’t because your mouth feels as if it’s sandpaper.”

It comes as the number of COVID-19 cases in the UK surged to 1,140 on Saturday, with 21 confirmed deaths. 

Emergency legislation bringing in beefed-up powers will be published next week and there could also be a move towards more people working from home, a Whitehall source said.

The announcement comes as the UK deals with a rising number of cases of the illness, increasing to 798, and a death toll of 11.

WHO spokeswoman Dr Harris questioned the UK’s approach to developing “herd immunity” against COVID-19, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today: “We don’t know enough about the science of this virus, it hasn’t been in our population for long enough for us to know what it does in immunological terms.

“Every virus functions differently in your body and stimulates a different immunological profile.

“We can talk theories, but at the moment we are really facing a situation where we have got to look at action.”

On Friday, the UK’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance said it is hoped the Government’s approach to tackling coronavirus will create a “herd immunity” to the disease.