Sarah Palin confirms positive test for COVID-19

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said Wednesday she has tested positive for COVID-19.

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Palin, 57, who was the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2008, confirmed her positive test to People and is urging other people to continue taking the pandemic seriously.

“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 told the magazine. “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 (frozen!) air, my case is perhaps one of those that proves anyone can catch this.”

It was not clear when Palin tested positive, The Associated Press reported. However, she told People that other members of her family had also tested positive for COVID-19.

Palin told the magazine that one of her daughters woke up and noticed she had lost her sense of taste and smell. A subsequent test revealed a positive result.

“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,” Palin told People. “Children with special needs (the boy was born with Down syndrome) are vulnerable to COVID ramifications, so with a high fever he was prescribed azithromycin, which really seemed to help, and I increased amounts of vitamins I put in his puréed food.”

Palin said she and her son “buckled down in isolated quarantine,” and she still tested negative. However, “symptoms started overnight with a slight fever and sore muscles,” Palin told People.

Palin said that after experiencing some of the “bizarre” symptoms common to COVID-19, she believed it was “unmistakable COVID caught me.”

“That day I finally tested positive -- like millions of other Americans,” Palin told People.

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