Then, about two weeks ago, I woke up with a sore throat and felt lethargic. I sent my editor a message on Wednesday April 1 asking for a couple of quiet days to shake off what I assumed was exhaustion. But things spiralled and the symptoms of COVID-19 developed rapidly. By Saturday, my sense of taste and smell disappeared and my body felt like it had been pummelled by baseball bats. Fever set in as I went to bed that night. Cold chills made me shake uncontrollably for hours even though my skin was searingly hot to touch. The chills eventually subsided and I was boiling for the rest of the night. The next day I could barely stand up and didn't have the energy to do anything other than sit on the couch or lie in bed. I couldn't focus on a television screen for more than a few minutes. My neck felt like it had been trampled on and my head like it was about to explode. I sat at my desk that Sunday night and filed a story about the Queen's rare broadcast to the nation. I struggled to type and felt like I was about to pass out. That same night I shook so violently from the fever that I threw up. By mid-week, a dry cough had set in and my breathing got shorter and sharper. One of the worst moments came on Thursday when I got up for the third time that night. After getting out of the shower, I got dressed in the bathroom but slumped to the floor clutching my chest and gasping for air. At the end of half-an-hour on the tiles I still couldn't stand up so had to crawl on my hands and knees back to the bedroom and literally climb into bed. I never told my already worried family, friends or colleagues that bit. I did not think I was going to die but it absolutely felt like the virus was trying hard to kill me. I've never been so sick, or scared.

This is no ordinary cold or flu and the simplistic comparisons to seasonal flu during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic did a huge disservice to public safety. Many people will indeed experience only mild symptoms and recover within a few days. Others have it and don't even know it. But the virus is vicious in the way it attacks everyone else, and remarkable in how easily it can spread. The only way I could have contracted it was at the supermarkets; it was the only place I had been in the fortnight before the symptoms developed, other than a few walks around London's deserted streets. Loading Had COVID-19 not existed and I had the same symptoms, I would have taken myself to hospital for help days earlier. My bosses and friends repeatedly urged me to go to hospital, but getting medical assistance was not easy. The authorities don't want symptomatic people anywhere near a GP's office or emergency department, so have built substantial barriers to getting tested and entering hospital. I called the National Health Service three times to ask for help. During the first two consultations, sympathetic clinicians told me to stay home, ride it out and call for an ambulance if I had sustained difficulty breathing. The advice makes sense on paper or when it is uttered at one of Downing Street's daily press conferences, but feels almost callous when you are so horribly sick. I was lucky to have a big support network to rely on but not everyone is so fortunate. The government's advice is to isolate at home for at least seven days if you have symptoms and live alone. Contact tracing is non-existent. Here in Britain, you can get tested for coronavirus only if you are in hospital. Compare that with Australia, where people with even minor symptoms are now being urged to come forward for testing.

The only way I will be able to confirm I had coronavirus will be through an antibody test. Downing Street's own experts now concede the lack of widespread testing has been a major error and are urgently trying to lift the number of daily tests to 100,000. Overall, the UK is still only testing roughly the same number of people as Australia, which has not even half the population and is far less affected by the outbreak. It's a strange situation when so many other countries have been able to ramp up mass testing to better control the pandemic. Loading My third call to the NHS led them to dispatch an ambulance to my apartment because my symptoms had not improved after a week and my breathing was getting more laboured. Dressed head to toe in protective equipment, two paramedics came inside and checked my temperature, blood pressure and heart rate. I was racked with guilt the whole time about exposing them to possible infection. We talked about whether I should go to hospital and in the end I decided against it after they made it pretty clear that the nearest one - St Thomas', where Johnson was being treated - was basically at capacity and I could find myself in a waiting room or corridor. A police officer outside St Thomas' Hospital, where Boris Johnson was being treated. Credit:Bloomberg It was the right call: that night I improved and within two days it felt like the virus had given up and moved on. The fever has gone and my breathing has been improving. But I worry deeply about how many people also tried to do the right thing by avoiding emergency departments, only to leave it too late.

'That night I improved and within two days it felt like the virus had given up and moved on.' Around the world, debate about the virus is shifting to how to return to some semblance of normality. It's an important discussion but one that must be carefully balanced with an understanding that people are still suffering from this disease, often alone. And that many who have been fortunate enough to avoid this virus so far will have a horrible ordeal, or even die, if the easing goes too far too soon. Australia's own track record in suppressing the virus is remarkable. Prime Minister Scott Morrison and state premiers have done a good job in protecting the public from the sort of carnage Europe is experiencing daily. The risk of that success is that Australians become restless about the heavy economic costs of the strategy, and complacent about how easily COVID-19 spreads and how dangerous it can be. Those grim daily death tolls have arrived for today: another 1438 deaths have been recorded in the past 24 hours in France, 761 in Britain, 578 in Italy and 523 in Spain. That's 3300 in a day in just four countries. Don't be complacent. You don't want to catch this.