Edwina Currie blasted by Terrence Higgins Trust for ‘lazy’ HIV and Covid-19 comparison on Good Morning Britain

Edwina Currie has been criticised by Terrence Higgins Trust after she compared the HIV/Aids epidemic to the coronavirus crisis on today’s Good Morning Britain.

Susanna Reid and Ben Shephard had been discussing the pandemic one year on with the former Conservative MP, when she equated Princess Diana shaking hands with HIV patients to Boris Johnson shaking hands with Covid-19 patients.

‘Boris Johnson shook hands as a reflection of what Diana did with people during the HIV problems,’ Ms Currie said.

‘Do you remember those? When Diana went into the hospitals in order to shake hands with patients and to say to them, “You are not being stigmatised”.

‘That, I think, is what he was doing.’

Terrence Higgins Trust, the UK’s leading HIV & sexual health charity, hit out at Ms Currie’s ‘offence’ remarks.

Taking to Twitter, a spokesperson wrote: ‘Please don’t. Lazy comparisons between HIV and Covid-19 are misguided and offensive.

‘Princess Diana shook hands with and hugged people with HIV to *educate*. To show the world the virus can’t be passed on through touch at a time when hysteria was rife.

‘It is not the same.’

During her lifetime, Diana helped end the stigma against HIV/Aids.

At the height of the epidemic in 1987, she opened the HIV/Aids unit at London Middlesex Hospital where she was photographed shaking hands with a HIV positive man without gloves amid false reports you could ‘catch’ the disease through touch.

Meanwhile, prime minister Mr Johnson continued to shake hands after scientists advised the practice should be stopped amid the coronavirus outbreak.

On March 3, he told a press conference: ‘I can tell you that I am shaking hands continuously.

‘I was at a hospital the other night where I think there were actually a few coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody, you’ll be pleased to know.’

Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV.

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