"A horrible" infection that leaves those affected "very tired and exhausted".
It is Covid told in the words of Queen Elizabeth, 96 years old in about ten days, who somehow - albeit without ever expressing herself - confessed the experience recently made on the occasion of her own contagion, which passed the month last.
The tabloids give an account on the front page, citing what the sovereign declared yesterday in a virtual meeting with some representatives of the British National Health Service (NHS), during which Elizabeth II also complained about the restrictions imposed for months "by this horrible pandemic" compared to the prolonged inability to meet family members and loved ones.
While he did not fail to renew the praise to nurses and doctors of the Kingdom for the "spirit" with which they faced two years of emergency: a spirit worthy of "Dunkirk", he sentenced, recalling the comparison with one of the heroic pages of history British in World War II.
Infected by Covid a few days after the heir to the throne Charles over a month ago, the monarch - who this year celebrates the Platinum Jubilee of his 70 years of reign - has experienced for about a week "mild symptoms similar to those of a cold, "according to official court reports released at the time.
Symptoms that, however, have left her prostrate, the media now observe, interpreting her statements yesterday as the testimony of a real "battle against Covid".
And of a certain persistent fatigue: confirmed by the recent renunciation of a whole series of external commitments and by the limitation of his institutional agenda to a few appointments (in person or virtual), almost all from inside Windsor Castle.