Reba McEntire Shares Update on COVID-19 Recovery
The 66 year old is vaccinated, and feeling much better.
Country music icon Reba McEntire has recovered after contracting COVID-19 in July, the singer confirms, sharing details of her illness and urging fans to remain vigilant against the virus.
Updating fans during an interview with Variety about her new triple remix album, the Country Music Hall of Fame member said she and her boyfriend, actor Rex Linn, got COVID-19 last month despite being vaccinated. The 66-year-old hit maker had already shared that news, urging viewers on TikTok to take precautions themselves, and now says she is feeling better.
“I got it in July, around the 17th, and I had been vaccinated, and thank God, because I only was laying on the couch for two or three days, maybe four,” she explained. “I thought I had a sinus infection, because I wasn’t down for the count, in the hospital. I just laid around and watched all my favorite shows on Netflix and Prime Video and Hulu.”
McEntire went on to say the loss of her sense of smell finally tipped her off — and that seeing positive test results were unnerving.
“So I tested and sure enough, I did,” she went on. “It was a shock to me, because my good friend Red Steagall, in December he got it, and he was in the hospital.”
Staying upbeat, McEntire continued to say that while not being able to smell anything was a strange experience, she was grateful to keep her sense of taste. Even so, she urged readers to keep taking COVID-19 seriously — especially with the more-transmissible Delta variant sweeping the nation. But thankfully, her recovery is now complete — including her sense of smell.
“You know what, last night I smelled something and I went, ‘Oh my gosh,'” McEntire said. “What you take for granted all the time, with your sense of taste and smell. Thank God I didn’t lose my sense of taste, because I’m a foodie. Oh, I love to eat. And I didn’t lose it — maybe a touch, a little bit. Things are not as vibrant taste-wise. But boy, smell… We have a French bulldog, and he has little folds in his nose that catch that food. And if you don’t clean that out a lot, it gets to stinking. And so I couldn’t even smell that, and I said, ‘Oh, I know I’ve lost my sense of smell.'” [Laughs.]
Reba McEntire first announced her diagnosis a few weeks ago, smiling through the illness in a live video for TikTok. She noted that the resurgent spread COVID-19 was once again wreaking havoc on her personal and professional lives, and not just because she was physically sick. McEntire was forced to postpone the memorial for her late mother in Oklahoma last week, and her live-performance plans are once again in jeopardy.
She currently has plans to return to Las Vegas as she and Brooks & Dunn bring their long-running Together In Vegas residency to an end, but says now “we don’t know if that’s going to go. … We’re just gonna move forward, keep praying that everybody stays safe and healthy, and wear your mask and just be safe.”
