Carrie Johnson has revealed that she spent a week in hospital after suffering from flu and pneumonia, as England’s emergency services battle with their ‘busiest winter ever’.
Sharing a snap of her in a hospital bed, the wife of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that she spent the first few days of 2025 at John Radcliffe hospital in Oxfordshire after enduring a ‘nasty’ chest infection for nearly 18 days.
‘It just got out and I was struggling to breathe properly’, she wrote in an Instagram caption.
‘Hospital confirmed I had flu and pneumonia. I was there nearly a week and I’m still not recovered. It could take another few weeks until I feel like myself again.’
Carrie went on to praise the team of staff who helped her through her recovery, calling NHS doctors and nurses ‘the best people on earth’.
‘I say it a lot but they have looked after me and my family when we’ve needed it most and I will never not be enormously grateful. They are the absolute best of us.’
‘I was at the John Radcliffe and I cannot thank them enough. When I was particularly low, one nurse even serenaded me by my bed’, she shared.
Carrie also urged people to get the flu jab, saying: ‘I really, really wish I had. It totally slipped my mind this year.
Carrie Johnson has revealed that she spent a week in hospital after suffering from flu and pneumonia
Carrie also shared that her children gave her their toys to keep her company while at hospital
Carrie Johnson pictured with husband Boris. She went on to praise the NHS for treating her
‘No guarantee, but I very possibly wouldn’t have spent the last 3 weeks horribly, horribly ill had I got it’, she added.
The former PM’s wife also shared a second snap of a green dinosaur and a heart-shaped princess key ring, which she said belonged to her young children Wilfred and Romy.
‘The second picture is Wilf’s favourite dinosaur toy “Greenie” and Romy’s princess key ring which they gave me to take to hospital with me and lived by my bedside. Health and family are everything’.
It comes amid warnings that England’s emergency services are battling their ‘busiest winter ever’ as flu cases continue to soar.
More than 2.3million patients visited A&E in December while ambulance teams tackled over 800,000 incidents — the highest number ever recorded in a single month.
Separate surveillance data that monitors England’s flu outbreak also suggests hospital admissions are up a fifth in a week and nearly five times the level recorded in early December.
The crisis has already led to a dozen hospitals declaring critical incidents meaning they are struggling to provide safe care to patients.
Experts also fear the UK’s ‘dangerous’ cold spell will continue to pile pressure on already stretched hospitals.
Just this week the UK Health Security Agency extended its ‘amber’ cold-health alert, until 12pm Sunday January 12.