BBC newsreader George Alagiah has become one of the first British television stars to test positive for coronavirus.
Alagiah, who is also currently fighting his second bout of bowel cancer, revealed his diagnosis to BBC News having not been on-air in recent weeks.
He said that he has had a mild dose of the illness, which has so far killed a total of 1,789 people in the UK, and is now working towards recovery. Alagiah added that his experience with cancer has strengthened his response to the virus.
“If I can live with cancer, I can certainly live with Covid-19,” he told the BBC. “I don’t want to trivialize because I seem to have had a mild dose, but actually, the very fact that we are living with cancer I think gives us an edge.
“We’ve confronted those difficult, dark moments in our life. And in some ways, I think that we, those of us living with cancer, are stronger because we kind of know what it is like to go into something where the outcomes are uncertain.
“And I certainly feel that having had that experience, in my case six years as a cancer patient, I went into this feeling actually quite strong.”
Alagiah was first diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2014 and it returned in 2017. He has presented BBC News At Six this year in between rounds of treatment for the condition.