Broadcaster Kate Garraway says her husband’s health is beginning to improve after it took a “frightening turn for the worse” which saw him “fighting for his life”.

Former political adviser Derek Draper, 54, became seriously ill with coronavirus in March 2020, suffering lasting damage to his organs and requiring daily care.

In an update on social media, Garraway, 55, explained her recent three-week absence from TV and radio.

“Derek’s health took an unexpected and frightening turn for the worse that landed him back in intensive care and fighting for his life – again,” she wrote.

But thanks to the “amazing NHS teams and his own extraordinary life force and spirit, Derek – please, thank God – is back on the right side of it”, she added.

Garraway said she was looking forward to being back on air and “hopefully celebrating” a win for the Lionesses in Euro 2022.

She thanked people, too, for “all your messages of support”, saying they “really do mean the world to me and the whole family”.

Garraway and Draper married in 2005 and have two children, Darcey and Billy.

Last year, she won a prize at the National Television Awards for the documentary Finding Derek, about her family’s traumatic experience of the pandemic.

Earlier this year, Garraway said she was finding a “new way to be in love” with her husband as he recovered from long COVID.

Read more: Kate Garraway’s husband Derek Draper back in hospital as he suffers from long COVID

She told the Mail On Sunday’s You magazine: “I’m not sure that we’ve ever fallen out of love, but I think a new path is emerging, a new way to be in love.

“He puts huge trust in me. He just says, ‘Whatever you think,’ which is wonderful, but I do get quite tearful about it. I think, ‘God, I hope I’m worthy of that trust.’

“But I’ve got his back. That is a relationship in itself, isn’t it?”

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