Countryfile star Kate Humble blasts coronavirus lockdown curbs

Kate Humble has warned that the Government’s ‘disproportionate’ response to coronavirus will result in a national mental health crisis.

In a scathing attack on the handling of the pandemic, the former Countryfile presenter said she felt people were becoming ‘scared and miserable and lonely’ as a result of the restrictions and that levels of anxiety were increasing.

Miss Humble, 51, said she felt sorry for her friends who are unable to visit parents in care homes suffering from dementia.

‘I’ve had conversations that have left me ragged with grief on their behalf,’ she added. 

‘You just think that it is so disproportionate, it is so, so wrong. It is basically inhumane.’

The star of wildlife and adventure TV shows, who is married to TV producer Ludo Graham, also believes that the NHS is prioritising Covid-19 cases ahead of ‘more important’ patients.

Recalling a visit to a hospital in July, she said a doctor told her they had seen children whose admission for brain tumours had been delayed as a result of lockdown. 

She added: ‘That seems to be a pattern across the board whether it’s people with cancer who haven’t had treatment or haven’t gone in to get a lump checked out. It feels to me the NHS is going to be under increasing pressure and then there is this very real threat of a national mental health crisis.

‘There are other things that are far more important and far more damaging and will pile more pressure on the NHS than Covid-19. None of us feel like we have any control and I also think very few of us feel we have any trust in the people that do apparently have control.’

Miss Humble, who has written a book called A Year Of Living Simply, says the virus has had one benefit – allowing people to connect with nature and to ‘pause and re-evaluate our values’.