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Health minister Nadine Dorries received a warm welcome as she returned to the House of Commons after recovering from coronavirus.
MPs from both sides of the chamber cheered as the MP for Mid Bedfordshire entered the Commons on Tuesday afternoon.
Ms Dorries self-isolated at home during her illness, which also saw her 84-year-old mother infected.
After beginning her quarantine period on March 6, she told social media followers she had lost “100 per cent of” her senses of taste and smell as a “weird” side effect of the disease.
The 62-year-old, who was the first MP to test positive for the virus, previously wrote in the Sunday Times that discovering she had tested positive for Covid-19 was like “iced water trickling down my spine”.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock rounded off his ministerial statement on Tuesday afternoon – in which he updated MPs on the government’s efforts to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic – by making reference to her return.
“The final point I’d like to make Madame Deputy Speaker is that the minister for mental health and patient safety is sitting next to me and close to me and that’s because she has recovered,” he said.
“And all the evidence is you can’t catch this twice, at least in quick succession, and so that’s OK. So I welcome her back to her place.”
Additional reporting by PA.
