UK’s Prince William tested positive for coronavirus earlier this year, reports say

Prince William, second-in-line to the British throne, tested positive for coronavirus earlier this year, according to the BBC, citing palace sources.

When exactly William was infected is unclear. The Sun newspaper, which broke the story, said that he took a seven-day break from calls and video messages from April 9 to April 16.

The paper added that William, also styled the Duke of Cambridge, recently told an “observer” at a function that he did not go public with his diagnosis because “there were important things going on and I didn’t want to worry anyone.”

The Press Association reported that Kensington Palace, William’s residence and office, did not comment on the matter when contacted on Sunday, but also did not deny the report. CNN has also contacted Kensington Palace for comment but has not yet heard back.

In March, William’s father, Prince Charles, himself tested positive and had to go into isolation. The 71-year-old later said he had been lucky to only experience mild symptoms, adding he’d “got away with it quite lightly.”

Charles urged the world to listen to scientists and act to protect the environment in order to avoid more pandemics in the future.

“We should have been treating the planet as if it was a patient long ago. So no self-respecting doctor would ever have let the situation, if the planet is a patient, reach this stage before making an intervention,” he said.

“The more we erode the natural world, the more we destroy what’s called biodiversity — which is the immense diversity of life, plant life, tree life, everything else, marine life — the more we expose ourselves to this kind of danger. We’ve had these other disasters with SARS and Ebola and goodness knows what else, all of these things are related to the loss of biodiversity.”

Nor are the royals the only people at the top of British politics to be stricken by the virus, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was himself infected in April, eventually being admitted to hospital and placed on oxygen. Johnson later said that “arrangements” were made for his death while he was being treated, and thanked doctors and nurses for saving his life.

The United Kingdom is among Europe’s worst hit countries, with more than a million coronavirus cases, according to Johns Hopkins University. On Saturday, Johnson said that England would enter a second national lockdown in the coming days, as the Office for National Statistics estimated that 1 in 100 people in England now have Covid-19.

Of the UK’s 1.034 million total cases, the vast majority, around 880,000, are in England, the union’s most populous country. The other two countries which form mainland Britain, Wales and Scotland, both set their own health policy.

Around the time its neighbor enters lockdown, Wales, with around 51,000 cases, will be most of the way through a two-week “firebreak” lockdown, designed to prevent the situation there worsening. Meanwhile, Scotland, which has around 1,000 daily cases at the moment, has advised residents against travel to England, and is considering additional restrictions should its domestic outbreak worsen.