Kate Garraway’s husband Derek Draper has returned home after more than a year battling Covid-19 in hospital

Kate Garraway’s husband Derek Draper has returned to the family home in north London and has been reunited with his wife and children. 

Former political adviser Derek was first admitted to hospital in March last year with Covid-19 symptoms before being diagnosed with the virus. He was later placed in a coma, which he woke from in July. Throughout Derek's battle with Covid-19, presenter Kate has been balancing working on ITV’s Good Morning Britain with looking after their two children Darcey, 15 and Billy, 11. 

Now Kate has happily revealed that Derek has finally come home – and they couldn’t be more delighted. Speaking on GMB, she described how the couple’s children excitedly ran outside and up to their father after they pulled up.

“I could see two little faces of Darcey and Billy looking out the window and I could see literally see Billy say ‘he's here!’ and they sort of ran out and ran forward,” Kate revealed. 

“He immediately burst into tears, there was a lot of hugging and we got him inside. He absolutely knew he was home.”

Derek’s emotional return home comes after Kate opened up like never before on the devastating past year in ITV’s Kate Garraway: Finding Derek. The documentary, which aired last month, showed just how Kate and her children’s lives were changed since Derek was admitted to hospital. It also showed some realities of living with long Covid. 

It’s understood that now Derek will receive 24-hour care at the couple’s home, which Kate has had adapted to make it more accessible. She went on to disclose that she had been discussing the potential best way forwards for quite some time. 

“It’s been a lot of discussions, even before Christmas about what is the best way to go, because it’s kind of balancing… it’s a very unique situation, Derek’s situation,” Kate said. “It was really looking at his cognition and looking at his consciousness, and trying to think about what would be the best way to improve that.”

She went on to add that “there have been improvements” but “it felt as though everything had stalled medically and if anything was going slightly back.”

“It does feel a little bit like the hospital has come home with me at the moment, as we’ve got all sorts of professional people making sure everything is safe and then see how being in the family environment could help,” Kate later explained.

This significant step in Derek’s recovery is certainly a positive one for the family, as Kate described it as feeling “like the start of a huge chapter, but a really, really big and important one". 

“We’ve got to stay positive, we got to have hope. We’ll get there. And he’s here!” she declared.