3 June 2020updated 06 Oct 2020 9:45am

Phil Jones’s Diary: My struggles with Covid-19, back to work at the BBC, and what I’ve learned about human kindness

The morning after the Prime Minister announced the start of lockdown, I woke up with a fever, dry cough and searing headache.

By Phil Jones

FRIMLEY, ENGLAND - MAY 22: Image released on May 27, Doctors treat a patient suffering from coronavirus on an Intensive Care ward at Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey to send to the parents as visiting hours are restricted because of COVID pandemic on May 22, 2020 in Frimley, United Kingdom. The hospital is part of the Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust which has said that with Covid-19 pressure gradually reducing, they are planning to increase the number of procedures it provides, with more outpatient, diagnostic, endoscopy and surgical services and priority given to the most urgent work, for example, cancer diagnoses and treatments. (Photo by Steve Parsons - Pool/Getty Images)

Looking back, I was almost as cavalier about Covid-19 as Boris Johnson. I didn’t exactly think it was OK to go around shaking hands with everyone, but I was well behind the curve. I remember saying to a colleague at BBC Radio 2, “I just want things to be normal.” He’s the sort of person who hates to contradict his boss, but he looked me straight in the eye and said, “But Phil, things aren’t normal.”

That evening the Prime Minister announced the start of lockdown, and the next morning I woke up with a fever, dry cough and searing headache. I confidently thought I’d be better in five days, but the nightmare was just beginning. Each week the symptoms got worse. Friends have subsequently asked what it was like having Covid-19. It really did feel, as if in a science fiction novel, as though there was something inside my body trying to kill me. By the end of week three, I remember thinking: “If this steps up again, I may not survive.”