A woman fighting coronavirus said it felt like her whole body was on fire and she ‘had swallowed glass’.

Mum-of-three, Mandy Charlton, 46, was admitted to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle via ambulance on Friday evening with a temperature of more than 38 degrees celsius.

The photographer is now self-isolating at home until the end of the week and has been sleeping for 20 hours a day and taking paracetamol to recover.

Mandy, from Newcastle, said: ‘I know my temperature was once 37.9 and once over 39. I have a weird dry cough which hurts.

‘My body has felt like it has been on fire, waking up drenched, horrible. I’ve had flu before but this was something else.

‘When it came to the hospital saying I was well enough to go home and self-isolate, I asked how I would get home.

‘They said I could wait nine hours whilst they tried to get some isolation transport or I could ask a friend.

‘I had a panic attack at that point, thankful for my best friend who risked her own health to get me home.

‘I don’t for one moment blame the doctors or the nurses, I wholly place the blame on the government.’

Mandy believes she contracted the virus from one of her daughters when she came home from school with a fever last week.

She spent a night in the hospital before being discharged 12 hours later.

Mandy said fortunately her children are old enough to be able to look after themselves during her self-isolation period.

Mandy said: ‘One of the nurses said I was lucky to be admitted when I was.

‘At the moment they’re coping, but in a few weeks they won’t be. The porters weren’t even given masks.

‘I asked one of them and he said the day before they’d had to wear plastic visors but then on that day, Friday, they’d been told they would be fine without any protection.

‘The paramedics were having to borrow masks and aprons as they’d run out.’