LONDON, UK — Prince Charles says he has missed giving his family members a hug during the long weeks of lockdown due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
The Prince of Wales also acknowledged in an interview with Sky News on Thursday that he had not seen his father, the Duke of Edinburgh for many weeks. Prince Philip, who is shielding at Windsor Castle with Queen Elizabeth II, is set to celebrate his 99th birthday next week.
Speaking virtually from his Scottish home of Birkhall, Charles — the heir to the throne — was asked about being apart from his family.
“Well, it’s terribly sad, let alone one’s friends,'' he said. “But fortunately, at least you can speak to them on telephones and occasionally do this sort of thing.
“But it isn’t the same is it? You really want to give people a hug,” he said.
Charles, who himself suffered from COVID-19, said contracting coronavirus made him more determined to “push and shout and prod” for a more green approach and to have nature return to the “center of everything we do.”
When he was asked if he thought life as we knew it would ever return, he said it was important to give people hope after many difficult weeks.
"I think the point about all this is that what we need is to try and rebuild people's hope. We don't have to stop doing everything," he said in the interview. "We can come back in a far better way that enables us to have something very much approaching normality."
