Nadine Dorries says positive Covid-19 diagnosis was a ‘game-changer’

Health minister Nadine Dorries said confirmation she had contracted the coronavirus was like “iced water trickling down my spine”.

Ms Dorries is self-isolating at home after testing positive for Covid-19 earlier this week and wrote in the Sunday Times of the news being a “game-changer” as she had not been abroad or come into contact with anyone who had.

The MP for Mid Bedfordshire also wrote of her fears for her 84-year-old mother who “is not in the best of health”.

She wrote in the paper of her diagnosis: “I stopped listening for a second as the thought flew through my mind: my mum is going to get it and it’s my fault. I had brought Covid-19 home from Westminster and had unwittingly passed it on to her.

“It felt as though the clocks had stopped. I knew that everything was about to change and I wanted to hold time where it stood.”

She said her symptoms included a persistent cough, achy muscles and intermittent night sweats.

Ms Dorries, best known by many for her stint on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here, advised people to think of everything as being contaminated.

She said: “Every lift button, shopping-trolley handle, wait-button on a zebra crossing – and every cup in a cafe. Wash your hands for 20 seconds. Carry hand-sanitiser and use it over and over. Resist the urge to hug or shake hands with anyone.”

Ms Dorries urged people not to stockpile items like toilet rolls, tweeting: “Having lived through coronavirus, can I assure everyone that at no time during the seven days we were in isolation at home did we even once have to face a secondary crisis and run out of loo roll.”