Piers Morgan has said Kate Garraway’s husband Derek Draper remains in a “very serious condition”, as he clarified media reports about his health.
Derek has been in hospital since March after contracting coronavirus, and while he is now “Covid-free”, he is still battling to overcome the damage it has caused to his body.
After Kate gave an interview to Hello magazine with an update on his condition, the Good Morning Britain presenter has said subsequent headlines that Derek ‘had woken from his coma’ may “excite a level of optimism that may not yet be justified”.
As Piers and co-host Susanna Reid spoke about the interview on Monday’s edition of the ITV breakfast show, he said: “A few papers doing a lot of coverage on our great friend and colleague Kate Garraway and the situation involving her husband Derek and it’s probably not quite as positive a story as the papers perhaps believe.
“So we just have a little clarification from Kate’s representative saying, ’These headlines may excite a level of optimism that may not yet be justified.
“We hope as does Kate that there will be more evidence of a recovery but it will be a very slow and uncertain path.’”
Revealing Kate would be appearing on GMB on Wednesday, Piers continued: “She will have something, I’m sure, to say about this.
“It’s certainly premature at the moment to think Derek is in anyway out of the woods sadly on this. He remains in a very serious and critical condition.”
Speaking to Hello magazine, Kate had previously said: “We’re keeping positive and doing everything we can to bring him round,” she said. “The children and I communicate with him every day on FaceTime, while a nurse holds his iPad.
“I really believe he can hear. When medical staff say ‘Good morning, Derek,’ he sometimes opens his eyes.”
Kate also said that “the doctors have warned that his condition could persist for years so I have to get on with life whilst we are waiting for him to get better”.
She added: “Billy (their son) starts secondary school in September, but Derek’s doctors say he won’t be out of hospital by then.”
The presenter also said she wants to return to work after Derek’s doctors “urged her not to put her life on pause”.
She said: “They’ve told me that I need to go back to work and create a routine in our lives again...
“I also need to get back to work so that I can provide for the children and we can do things together, to make them feel that the light hasn’t gone out of their lives, that there’s hope for the future.”
The couple, who are both 52, married in 2005 and have a 14-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son, Darcey and William.
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV.