Kate Garraway receives MBE for documenting husband Derek Draper’s Covid recovery

The presenter’s husband was hospitalised with the virus in March 2020

Derek Draper and Kate Garraway (James Gourley/ITV/Shutterstock)

Kate Garraway has received an MBE in the New Year Honours after she documented her husband’s recovery from a severe case of coronavirus.

Garraway’s husband, Derek Draper, was hospitalised with Covid in March 2020 and was later placed in a medically induced coma.

He woke up several months later and was allowed to go home in April this year, more than 12 months after he was first admitted.

During an episode of Piers Morgan’s Life Stories, Garraway said the virus had “devastated” her husband “from the top of his head to the tip of his toe”.

She said it had affected his digestive system, his kidneys, liver, heart, nervous system and that doctors believe inflammation had also passed through his brain.

The TV presenter, 54, is being recognised for her services to broadcasting, journalism and charity.

In March, ITV aired Finding Derek, a documentary which charted the family’s struggle while Draper was in hospital.

Garraway later won the authored documentary prize at the National Television Awards in September.

Although Draper is now home, he requires 24-hour care by Garraway and healthcare professionals.

A sequel, titled Caring For Derek, which will document the period following Draper’s return home, has also been confirmed and will air in 2022.

Also this year, Garraway published a memoir, The Power of Hope, detailing the “raw and emotional story” of her husband’s illness and the effect it has had on her family.

In an appearance on This Morning earlier this month, the journalist said “everything has to be done for [Draper]”, and that “everything” about the family’s life has changed.

Recalling the day her husband returned home from hospital, Garraway said watching him enter through the front door was “absolute unbridled euphoria”.

When asked by host Philip Schofield about “how much of Derek” Garraway thinks she will “get back”, she said she is uncertain.

“It’s very hard to know really, we’re having to have a new relationship with him,” she explained.

“What is there, he is still him, he remembers lots of little details, he reacts to things the kids do in the way he would have before. He’s smiling and laughing at things, and he definitely adores and loves us all.

“At one point we thought we might be caring for him at home and we would be strangers, but he definitely knows us.”

Garraway and Draper married in 2005 and have a daughter named Darcey and a son named Billy.