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  • Let's just get you an update now on the health of Prince Philip, the husband of Britain's Queen Elizabeth, you'll remember he has been treated in hospital in London for nearly two weeks.

  • Buckingham Palace have released this statement.

  • The Duke of Edinburgh was today transferred from King Edward Hospital to ST Bartholomew's Hospital, where doctors will continue to treat him for an infection, as well as undertake testing and observation for a pre existing heart condition.

  • The Duke remains comfortable and is responding to treatment, but is expected to remain in hospital until at least the week after next.

  • Our correspondent, John McManus, is outside the hospital where the Duke of Edinburgh was being treated.

  • Thanks very much, John, for joining us.

  • Just bring us up to date on the situation there with the Duke.

  • Yes, that statement from Buckingham Palace, as you say, coming in the last 45 minutes, confirming that the Duke's nearly two weeks day at King Edward, the seventh hospital behind me, is now over.

  • But instead of going home or to Windsor Castle, he's in fact been taken to another hospital here in central London.

  • ST Bartholomew's, commonly known as ST Barts and that's quite telling, because ST Barts specializes in cardiac conditions in treating cardiac conditions, and we know that in the past the Duke has had problems in that area.

  • In 2011, he was treated for a blocked coronary artery, and he's had to deal with other problems as well.

  • The following year, he had a bladder infection.

  • In 2013, he had exploratory surgery on his abdomen.

  • And at Christmas in 2019, the Duke was here again, where he spent four nights leaving on Christmas Eve after being treated for an unknown element.

  • The Palace didn't say why he was here.

  • They are usually very tight lipped about the health of the duke, who's 99 years old but also all the members of the royal family.

  • And they haven't given too much away this time, either.

  • While the Duke's been here and the information we have managed to glean has come from members of his own family with the Duke of Cambridge, Prince William, for example, saying that his grandfather was okay.

  • Uh, and the Duke also had a visit from his son, the Prince of Wales, last weekend, who came here to the hospital for about half an hour.

  • So the Duke of Edinburgh, 99 years old, transferred to another hospital across London and the palace, saying it's unlikely that he'll be out of hospital.

  • Certainly not by the end of this week, anyway.

  • Yeah, John, he's had lived quite a quiet life in in recent years, bowing out of public life in 20 17.

  • We're just showing our viewers there those images of the ambulance leaving, uh, the hospital earlier.

  • Not often.

  • You see a member of the royal family in in an NHS ambulance?

  • No, very unusual.

  • And it was a little bit of a cloak and dagger operation as well to get the Duke out of King Edwards and on his way to ST bars, we saw the that ambulance leave, but we weren't quite sure who was in it at the time.

  • And certainly the palace didn't give anything away until after the Duke was well on his way.

  • They clearly didn't want too much media attention on a 99 year old, but the Duke has had several health problems, as I said over the past decade, and when he was here at King Edward's in 2019 at that point, Prince Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, told a member of the public.

  • Look at that age.

  • Things don't often work as they're supposed to.

  • So there is a bit of an understanding, an acceptance that the Duke, who is going to be 100 in June, is perhaps not in the best of health.

  • We will await further updates from Buckingham Palace, though.

Let's just get you an update now on the health of Prince Philip, the husband of Britain's Queen Elizabeth, you'll remember he has been treated in hospital in London for nearly two weeks.

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