Kate Garraway’s husband Derek Draper has received well wishes from his former Labour colleagues, including Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, as his health battle continues after contracting coronavirus.
Derek, 52, has been in hospital since March and remains in a coma after being diagnosed with Covid-19.
During an emotional interview last week, his wife and Good Morning Britain presenter Kate revealed that Derek is now Covid-free but the disease has ‘wreaked extraordinary damage’ on his body.
In the 90s, Derek was a political advisor for the Labour party and worked with then Labour MP Lord Peter Mandelson before serving under Blair and Brown.
According to Lord Mandelson, many of Derek’s former colleagues have sent supportive messages to the former lobbyist including video messages.
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‘The whole experience, the whole dreadful, tragic experience of what’s happened to him has actually brought an enormous lot of people, who knew him in the 90s and beyond, who knew him in New Labour and the government,’ said on BBC Radio 5 Live on Monday (8 June).
The former minister continued: ‘It’s brought an enormous lot of people back together again.
‘He’s been a hugely unifying figure, ironically, through this terrible, terrible tragedy. Both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have sent him recorded messages, as have done the rest of us.
‘We’re now giving him music, we’re giving him photographs in order to stimulate a response, we’ve all come together, and we just hope, and pray, he will come through it.’
In her interview, Kate, 53, explained how the effects of coronavirus have left Derek with ‘holes in his heart’ as well as a damaged a liver, and she has been warned he ‘may never recover’.
The couple married in 2005 and share daughter Darcey, 14, and son Billy, 10.
Speaking fondly of his friend, Lord Mandelson continued: ‘In a sense Derek played a huge role in launching me on my parliamentary and frontline career, and so I have lived this last 10 weeks and more day by day, with Kate and her wonderful children.
‘It is just incredible what that virus has done to him, to his lungs, to his liver, to his kidneys, and there were many, many points along this journey when none of us thought that he could possibly make it.’
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