Entertainment
Piers Morgan caught Covid-19 after Euro 2020 final at Wembley: ‘The roughest I’ve ever felt’
Piers is recovering from Covid-19 (Picture: GC Images)
Piers Morgan has revealed he was left with chest pains, fever and cold sweats after catching Covid-19 at the Euros final at Wembley.
The 56-year-old believes he contracted the Delta variant of Covid-19 while watching Italy defeat England two weeks ago, despite a policy that only fully vaccinated fans or those with negative tests would be admitted to the stadium.
Piers himself had received both doses of the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine, but was told that no current vaccine fully protects against infection.
In an excerpt of his full account, which will be published by the Mail on Sunday, Piers said he noticed that the match was turning into an ‘unregulated free-for-all’ as those without tickets managed to breach security to watch the match.
The journalist, who attended the match with his sons Stanley, Spencer and Albert, said: ‘My confidence that the event would be “Covid safe” had disintegrated.’
Two days after the match, Piers began to feel unwell and took a lateral flow test, which came back positive.
He then took a PCR test, which also returned a positive result, and during his illness, Piers experienced fever, cold sweats, coughing, sneezing, ’strange aches’ and ‘alarming’ chest pains.
Piers’s symptoms have now faded, and he says he owes ‘a heartfelt debt of thanks’ to the creators of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Oxford.
The former Good Morning Britain host said: ‘This is definitely the roughest I’ve felt from any illness in my adult life, BUT, as I slowly come out the other side, coughing and spluttering.
‘I’m still here – unlike so many millions around the world who’ve lost their lives to Covid in this pandemic.’
No vaccine can fully protect against Covid-19, particularly with some of the new variants, but they provide strong protection against severe symptoms, hospitalisation and death.
There were concerns that the final could be a super-spreader event (Picture: AP)
Piers had previously defended his attendance at the final, but said that it stopped feeling safe when ‘1000s of drunken morons crashed their way in with no tickets or testing – and probably turned it into a huge super-spreader event.’
There had been concerns that the Euros final, which allowed 60,000 people into Wembley, was a ‘recipe for disaster’, with the World Health Organisation warning that tournament crwds could could fuel an increase of cases across Europe.
More: Coronavirus
While stats from the final have not been released, hundreds of cases have been linked to earlier matches in the tournament, including over 1,000 Scottish fans who travelled to London for the Scotland vs England match on June 18.
Restrictions were lifted across England on July 19’s ‘Freedom Day’, but cases have skyrocketed, with 309,000 new cases in the past seven days.
Nearly 88% of the adult population has received their first dose of the vaccine, while 69.5% of adults are fully vaccinated.
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