Donald Trump testing positive for Covid-19 must have taken the world by surprize, and certainly shocking for his voters and Republicans but he isn’t the only world leader battling a deadly disease. Many world leaders of our times have had their brush with Coronavirus in last few months.
Boris Johnson of United Kingdom had initially been flippant on the severity of the virus. But all this changed when the 55-year-old spent several days in intensive care in April following testing positive for the disease. A shaken Johnson was to say later: “It could have gone either way.”
Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro is another who was dismissive of Coronavirus. He tested positive in July and it took him several weeks to recover from the dreaded disease.
In mid-March, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau showed flu-like symptoms after returning from London. She was tested and found Corona positive. Her husband Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, entered into a 14-day self quarantine.
In July, Belarus’ combative president Alexander Lukashenko announced that he had Covid-19 and had lived through this virus. He had earlier dismissed the virus as “psychosis” and downplayed its spread in his country. Indeed, he had suggested saunas and vodka for its remedial.
Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez contracted virus in July and had to be hospitalized. He has since joined global calls for a coronavirus vaccine to be distributed without preference around the world.
Guatemalan president Alejandro Giammattei had multiple sclerosis and walks with a cane. As of now, in mid-September, he had also tested positive.
Three weeks before a presidential vote in the Dominican Republic in Juley, the leading candidate Luis Abinader and his wife announced that they had tested positive for the virus. In due course he went into isolation, recovered and won the election.
Bolivia’s interim president Jeanine Anex was a candidate for the country’s presidential elections following a bout with Covid-19 in July. She dropped out of race in mid-September.
In March, Prince Albert II of Monaco contracted the coronavirus. He was the first world leader to have been infected by the virus.
In India, so far, the biggest name to have contracted the virus is Amit Shah, India’s home minister. He has completely recovered from it now.