PC Anthony Wallyn (left), who stands at 7 foot 2 inches tall, towering over his colleague, PC Tony Thich, who is 5 foot 6 inches outside King Edward VII Hospital yesterday. “I get 100-500 requests for a photo each day,” says PC Wallyn.

Updated 3.20pm

QUEEN ELIZABETH II has been released from hospital after she was admitted over the weekend with gastroenteritis.

The British monarch was hospitalised yesterday at London’s King Edward VII hospital after she came down with the stomach bug on Friday, forcing her to cancel public engagements over the weekend.

All engagements this week have been cancelled or postponed including her planned trip to Rome.

In a brief statement released this afternoon, Buckingham Palace said: “The Queen has left the King Edward VII’s Hospital having been admitted briefly as part of the assessment of symptoms of gastroenteritis.”

She had been resting at Windsor Castle but was taken to hospital in London yesterday as a “precautionary measure” according a spokesperson for the palace.

“She was not taken into hospital immediately after feeling the symptoms. This is simply to enable doctors to better assess her,” the spokesperson said adding that the Queen was in “good spirits”.

It was her first hospital stay in ten years. Gastroenteritis is a viral infection which can cause diarrhoea, vomiting, loss of appetite, fever, tummy ache and drowsiness.

The Queen was last admitted to hospital in December 2003 when she had an operation at the same hospital to remove cartilage from her left knee and had some benign facial lesions removed at the same time.

- with reporting from AFP

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