Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) says that she previously tested positive for coronavirus and is encouraging Americans to mask up in order to slow its spread.
Palin, 57, confirmed her COVID-19 diagnosis in an interview with People magazine published Wednesday, stating that she and some of her family members, including her son and daughter, tested positive.
“As confident as I’d like to be about my own health, and despite my joking that I’m blessed to constantly breathe in the most sterile air, my case is perhaps one of those that proves anyone can catch this,” the former vice presidential nominee told the outlet.
Palin said that the virus slowly made its way through her household, with her daughter first exhibiting symptoms.
“[O]ne of my daughters awoke to having lost her sense of taste and smell [and] immediately had a positive COVID test, then was quarantined in isolation,” she told People. “I then observed symptoms in my son Trig, who curiously is the most enthusiastic mask-wearer, and after our numerous negative tests over the year, he tested positive.”
After preliminarily testing negative, Palin described later developing COVID-19 symptoms “overnight,” and suffering a fever, muscle soreness and loss of taste and smell.
It was “unmistakable,” she said, that “COVID caught me.”
“That day I finally tested positive — like millions of other Americans,” she said.
Palin encouraged Americans to wear a mask, calling it “better than doing nothing.”
Many Republicans have railed against mask-wearing during the pandemic, pushing back on mask mandates in multiple states.
“Through it all, I view wearing that cumbersome mask indoors in a crowd as not only allowing the newfound luxury of being incognito, but trust it’s better than doing nothing to slow the spread,” Palin said.
“And history will show we ‘Masked Singer’ visitors were masked before being masked was cool,” she added, pointing to her run on the show, where she rapped Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.”
More than 30 million COVID-19 cases have been reported in the U.S. since the start of the pandemic, and more than 550,000 people have died.