Madrid.- He Prince Albert of Monaco became five years ago the first head of state to contract covid-19, eight days after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the pandemic, and other important figures on the world stage followed suit.
Names like Charles of England and his mother, the now deceased Queen Elizabeth II, suffered from the disease, as did the skeptical British Prime Minister Boris Johnson or the quasi-denialists of Covid-19 Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, presidents of the United States and Brazil respectively.
Those who denied the virulence of the disease
Johnson, who was widely criticized for both organizing illegal parties at his Downing Street residence, which ultimately cost him his job, and for his government's slow response to Covid-19, advocated allowing older people to become infected in order to avoid locking down others.
Suffering from the virus, he was admitted to the intensive care unit of St. Thomas' Hospital in London on April 5, 2020, and left after 12 days in serious condition, thanking doctors for his recovery.
Donald Trump also became infected in October 2020, shortly before leaving the White House after losing the election to Joe Biden. For months, he was reluctant to wear a mask and even urged his followers to drink disinfectant to cure themselves, ultimately resulting in more than 100 people being poisoned by following his instructions.
Since the coronavirus arrived in Brazil in March 2020, its president, Jair Bolsonaro, who once called the pandemic that surpassed 30 million infections in his country a "little flu," has opposed all types of preventive measures, denounced the use of masks, downplayed the health crisis, mocked the sick, and even rejected vaccines, which he described as "experimental." He was infected in July 2020.
Ruling Houses
Several members of royal families were infected early in the pandemic. In the United Kingdom, several members of the royal family were affected. From Queen Elizabeth II, her son, now King Charles, and his eldest son, Prince William, to Prince Andrew, who did not attend his mother's jubilee after testing positive in June 2022.
The Swedish royal family also saw almost all of its members become infected during the first years of the pandemic, including King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia, Crown Princess Victoria and her husband Daniel, and Prince Carl Philip and his wife Sophie.
Princess Beatrix, the former Queen of the Netherlands and then 83 years old, tested positive on December 5, 2021.
That December, the Danish Royal Family announced that Queen Mary of Denmark had contracted the virus.
In 2022, King Felipe and Queen Letizia of Spain, Queen Mathilde of Belgium, and Princess Mette-Marit of Norway, who has also suffered from pulmonary fibrosis since 2018, also tested positive.
The virus also attacked Mohamed VI of Morocco and Princess Yoko of Japan.
Latin American leaders
In Latin America, a continent hit hard by COVID, almost all of its presidents have been infected.
You may be interested in: Five years have passed since the Covid-19 pandemic, which left more than 7 million dead worldwide
The first to be affected was Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras at the beginning of the pandemic, followed by Jeanine Añez of Bolivia, interim president, Alejandro Giammattei of Guatemala, Andrés López Obrador of Mexico, and Alberto Fernández of Argentina, who tested positive in April 2021, two months after receiving the second dose of the Sputnik-V vaccine.
Other heads of state and government who were not spared either
The French president did not escape the disease either, Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte, who were infected at the end of 2020, nor the President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, nor the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel, who remained hospitalized in serious condition for several days in the summer of 2021.
The virus also infected the prime ministers of Canada, Justin Trudeau, and Italy, Mario Draghi, as well as the presidents of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the United States, Joe Biden, and his vice president, Kamala Harris, in 2022.
