The Defence Secretary has told how having Covid-19 was 'bloody awful' and sapped his 'mental strength' - even in a mild case.
Top Tory Ben Wallace warned the killer virus "ebbs and flows" even in a mild case, so even when you think you've recovered, it can come back.
Asked how it was to have the virus in March, the Cabinet minister told Sky News: "Bloody awful if you want the honest truth."
For him the symptoms included extreme lethargy, "achey bones" and a loss of taste and smell.
He added: "It wasn't severe but it mentally taps your will because it comes and goes, it ebbs and flows.
"I sat on my own in my flat in London for 8 days and I lost taste and smell, and it's a sort of energy sapping thing that reduces your will.
"But it then disappeared and I took some more precautions but in the end I went back to work."
The 45-year-old said he was "very very lucky" not to have had a worse case like the tens of thousands who have had to go to hospital.
More than 28,000 people, including more than 100 NHS and social care staff, have died of coronavirus.
Mr Wallace told BBC Breakfast: "Unlike a flu or some other illnesses it saps away at your mental strength, because it comes and goes.
"You wake up and you think you're better.
"I remember one day I felt all my energy levels back to normal and thought 'this is good, I’ve got through it'.
"And I dozed on the sofa at lunchtime and it had gone to my chest - the sense of tightness was there for six or seven hours."
Boris Johnson will lay out a 'roadmap' for easing the lockdown in an address to the nation on Sunday.
It is expected to lay out how primary schools could open for some pupils - most likely Year 6 - as early as June 1.
But some measures will remain in place until there is a vaccine, Cabinet minister Michael Gove said last night.
Mr Wallace admitted fewer people would have died if the government had been better prepared with testing.
He told LBC: "I think if we’d known from the outset more about the virus, of course more lives could have been saved.
"But I don’t think it’s a country by country problem, I think it is a massive problem around how we share intelligence on viruses and learning at pace."
