The Prince of Wales has said contracting coronavirus made him more determined to “push and shout and prod” as he called for nature to return to the “centre of everything we do”.

Charles spoke about his experiences of Covid-19 in an interview with Sky News, paid tribute to key and health workers, and expressed sympathy with those who had lost family or friends.

Asked about catching the virus, the prince said by videocall: “It makes me even more determined to push and shout and prod.

“I was lucky in my case and got away with it quite lightly. But I’ve had it, and I can so understand what other people have gone through.

“I feel particularly for those who have lost their loved ones and have been unable to be with them at the time. That, to me, is the most ghastly thing. But in order to prevent this happening to so many more people, I’m so determined to find a way out of this.”

Charles came down with mild symptoms of coronavirus in March and recovered after self-isolating at his Scottish home of Birkhall.

He was interviewed as part of this week’s Sky News series After The Pandemic: Our New World, and said: “I can’t tell you how much I sympathise with the way that everyone has had to endure with this unbelievably testing and challenging time.”

He told Sky News royal correspondent Rhiannon Mills: “People have begun to realise that we have to put nature back at the centre of everything we do and put it at the centre of our economy.

“Before this nature has just been pushed to the peripheries, we’ve exploited and dug up and cut down everything as if there was no tomorrow, as if it doesn’t matter.”

The heir to the throne said that without learning from the pandemic we may face a similar threat in the future: “The more we erode the natural world, the more we destroy biodiversity, the more we expose ourselves to this kind of danger.

“We’ve had these other disasters with Sars and Ebola and goodness knows what else, all of these things are related to the loss of biodiversity. So we have to find a way this time to put nature back at the centre.”

The full interview will be broadcast on Sky News on Thursday.