LONDON. Prince Philip left the hospital where he had been hospitalized for about a month. The Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Elizabeth’s 99-year-old consort and whose 100th birthday will be in June, had been in the hospital for a month now. He was initially hospitalized in a private wing of King Edward VII, in the London neighborhood of Marylebone, on February 16, following a malaise and an unspecified infection, not linked – according to Buckingham Palace – to Covid (against which Philip has been vaccinated since December like Elizabeth II). Then he was transferred to the better equipped St Bartholomew’s Hospital, a center of excellence in the cardiovascular field, for a minor heart surgery related to his “past condition” (in 2011 he was implanted with a stent). And finally it was back to King Edward VII.
Philip spent the last months of the pandemic in near-total precautionary isolation with the queen in Windsor Castle. His condition aroused inevitable concern given his age, and despite his tough temper, even though the palace has repeatedly reassured that he was responding to therapy and was “in good spirits.”
Concerns also fueled by a sudden visit of the eldest son and heir to the throne Charles during the first phase of hospitalization: a visit, however, followed by some cautiously optimistic statements made by both his nephew William and by Camilla, Charles’s wife. In the same minutes as the Duke of Edinburgh left the hospital, Elizabeth also issued in her name a traditional message of good wishes to all Irish people (those of the north subjects of the United Kingdom such as those of the neighboring Republic of Dublin) for today’s patron saint patron’s day.