PRINCE WILLIAM had a secret that would have caused “panic stations” if he had revealed it at the time, according to a royal expert.
The Duke of Cambridge said in November that he had tested positive for coronavirus in April, sparking debate as to whether he should have been honest with the public at the time. William’s diagnosis came just weeks after his father Prince Charles tested positive. The fact that both the heir and second-in-line to the throne had COVID-19 might have caused people to worry, so William decided to keep it to himself.
Pod Save the Queen is hosted by Ann Gripper and features Daily Mirror royal editor Russell Myers.
Mr. Myers said he understood William’s decision because it would have been an “absolute crisis” if people had known, especially because there was so little known about the virus at the time.
He said: “It was a mad time, I remember bursting into the kitchen and announcing ‘Prince Charles has got coronavirus!’
“And I think that was probably the first time I thought ‘Oh my God, this is really serious’. “Prince Charles, we know he’s a fit and healthy man, he’s 71, but because he’s 71 it was always, talking about older people are more at risk, everyone over 50 and 60 were at risk, at that stage we didn’t really know about the trajectory of the virus, everyone was really worried, we were going into the lockdown.
And then Boris Johnson, and then now obviously we’ve found out that William had it only a couple of weeks later, and can you imagine if that had come out at the time?
“I think it would have been complete panic stations and I can actually sympathize with why they didn’t announce it at the time and that William has since let it be known that he did have it and then did recover, because it would have been an absolute crisis at the time.
“I mean, it was just an absolute juggernaut wasn’t it, day after day after day, headlines and figures and stats and looking at graphs that nobody understood.
“And certainly there was a very, very bizarre feeling and I don’t think we’ll ever want to go back to that.”
