Calls for new Bank Holiday in England to mourn all victims of coronavirus pandemic

Dame Esther Rantzen has called for a new Bank Holiday to mourn those killed by Covid.

The veteran TV presenter thinks a new national holiday should be scheduled to mourn those lost to Covid-19.

The death toll soared past 100,000 at the end of January in a grim milestone.

The 80-year-old said in The Times: “It would be helpful to create a day during which everybody remembers the people we have lost.”

Dame Esther warned if people did not deal with their grief, they would be “angry and hurt” and their feelings could manifest at elections.

She added: “I don’t think that we’re going to see Trump-style rioting in the streets and people breaking into parliament, but there’s a huge amount of individual hurt.”

The former That’s Life! presenter also urged the Department of Health to set up a helpline for those who have lost loved ones to Covid.

The avid campaigner was speaking ahead of her Channel 5 documentary, Esther Rantzen: Living with Grief, which airs on Thursday.

In the show, she meets people coping with bereavement, including a woman who lost her husband to coronavirus and a mum whose child drowned.

She confronts her own grief over the loss of her husband, TV exec Desmon Wilcox, who passed away from heart disease in 2000, aged 69.

Dame Esther said: “If you can get to the point where you celebrate what you had, that’s a terrific place to be. I feel that I have reached that place.”

At the moment, there are eight Bank Holidays in England and Wales, but an extra day has been granted for June 3, 2022.

This extra holiday is to mark the Queen’s platinum jubilee, to celebrate 70 years as reigning monarch.

A petition launched last year called on the Government to honour Covid victims with an annual day of remembrance.

Last April, two in three Britons supported the creation of a new holiday to celebrate NHS and care staff for their frontline services.

Medical, nursing and care leaders also backed the idea suggested by the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank.