Prince Charles has still not fully regained his sense of smell and taste, almost three months after contracting coronavirus.
The 71-year-old royal and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, returned to face-to-face official duties with a socially-distanced visit to the Gloucestershire Royal Hospital on Tuesday (16.06.20), and he revealed to the staff he met that he was still experiencing some symptoms following his "mild" case of the virus.
Jeff Mills, 47, a healthcare assistant from Cheltenham General Hospital, said: "He did speak of his personal experience, so first-hand experience for him.
"He also spoke about his loss of smell and taste and, sort of, still felt he’s still got it now."
Camilla hailed NHS workers and their response to the global health crisis as she described them as "Britain at its best".
Asked if the country’s appreciation of the NHS had changed for good, she said: "I think it has, you can tell by all the people coming out every week to clap – they’ve done the most remarkable things.
"The way they’ve looked after people, the way they’ve sort of kept control of the whole thing… it’s a question of not panicking and getting on with it and I think they are Britain at its best."
The couple met staff from various hospitals in the area, including doctors, nurses, volunteers, social workers, members of the domestic team and other frontline workers and Charles described the meeting as "marvellous".
He said: "It has been a marvellous opportunity just to have a chance to see people who I know have been doing so much on the front line and having to endure an awful lot of stress and strain in their wonderful way. How they do it, I don’t know.
"But delivering everything in the most effective way and the great thing that they were all saying is that it has brought different departments together in a way that hadn’t always happened before. There has been a great deal of marvellous cooperation, I think."
Charles – who greeted the hospital workers with a socially-distanced namaste – previously revealed he felt "lucky" that he’d "got away with it quite lightly" after experiencing only mild symptoms of coronavirus.