Donald Trump has tested positive for Covid-19
Credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP
Donald Trump joins a growing list of world leaders who have caught coronavirus, their policies often influenced by first-hand experience.
Boris Johnson tested positive at the height of the pandemic in April and spent four nights in intensive care at St Thomas’s hospital, London. The severity of his condition meant plans were drawn up in the event of his death.
The Prime Minister’s brush with death left a lasting impression that has since prompted a renewed drive against obesity.
Convinced that the severity of his illness was down to his weight, he has since lost a stone-and-a-half and has improved his personal fitness.
However, he is also reported to have suffered longer-term effects, amid claims he is exhausted and often looks unwell. Those close to him have denied such allegations and insist he is working long hours.
Boris Johnson speaks outside Downing Street after recovering from coronavirus
Credit: John Sibley/Reuters
Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, 65, also contracted Covid-19 and some have claimed he has since benefitted politically.
He spent nearly three weeks in isolation at the presidential palace after being diagnosed with the virus on July 7.
Mr Bolsonaro has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the pandemic, often joining rallies without wearing a mask and sidelining medical experts, despite Brazil having one of the world’s highest death tolls.
He likened it to “a little flu” and insinuated that state governors were deliberately inflating death tolls in order “to panic the population”. His position cost him two health ministers.
Even when announcing his diagnosis to reporters, Mr Bolsonaro took off his mask, saying: “Just look at my face. I’m well, fine, thank God.”
Like Mr Trump, Mr Bolsonaro said he was taking hydroxychloroquine, the controversial anti-malaria drug, which he has promoted despite evidence that it is ineffective.
Jair Bolsonaro waves during Independence Day celebrations in Brasilia on September 7
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However, experts have said that Mr Bolsonaro’s swift recovery from his illness may have served to bolster his claims that the pandemic has been overblown. It has also been claimed that it strengthened his image as a “superhuman messiah”.
While Mr Johnson and Mr Bolsonaro’s run-ins with coronavirus have been heavily reported on, few are aware that the world has probably already lost one president to the pandemic.
On June 8, Pierre Nkurunziza, president of the East African nation of Burundi, died suddenly. The government said it was a cardiac arrest but it is widely believed that Burundi’s president was the first world leader to die of Covid-19.
Mr Nkurunziza was a healthy 55-year-old strongman who enjoyed playing football and torturing his opponents. He was one of the few African leaders to downplay the seriousness of the pandemic and not to implement a draconian lockdown.
"Burundi is an exception because it is a country that has put God first," his spokesman said in late March.
Burundi's late president Pierre Nkurunziza
Credit: Evrard Ngendakumana/Reuters
Yet the government’s faith in the divine most probably cost the president his life. In May and June, sources told The Telegraph that the virus tore through the ranks of the tiny country’s political elite.
In late May, the president’s wife was flown to the Kenyan capital Nairobi for treatment of coronavirus symptoms, according to Kenyan officials. A few weeks after, Mr Nkurunziza died suddenly in a hospital in Karuzi in the centre of the country.
Opposition sources and journalists living in exile claim that the president had been undergoing treatment for Covid-19 in Karuzi before he died. A senior opposition source said that in the president’s final hours, one of the country’s few ventilators was flown by helicopter to Karuzi in a desperate bid to save his life.
Since Mr Nkurunziza’s death, Burundi’s new president has made a complete policy U-turn and started to take the virus seriously and ramp up testing.
The Burundian Army carry the coffin of late Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza
Credit: TCHANDROU NITANGA/AFP via Getty
Other world leaders who have contracted the virus include Russian prime minister Mikhail Mishustin, who temporarily stepped down in April and spent three weeks in hospital.
That month, Guinea-Bissau’s prime minister, Nuno Gomes Nabiam, also tested positive, as did four other senior government officials. They were quarantined in a hotel in the capital Bissau after the results were confirmed.
Jeanine Añez, the president of Bolivia who took power last November when Evo Morales was forced into exile, announced that she had tested positive in July. Half of her cabinet, including the health minister, also fell ill.
Ms Anez has been accused of using the pandemic to further her own political ambitions.
Other world leaders who have contracted the virus include Iraj Harirchi, Iran’s deputy health minister, who was filmed at a parliamentary session, sweating and coughing, before being diagnosed.
Iran has been the worst-affected country in the Middle East and leaked documents last month revealed that the number of deaths from coronavirus was at least triple the figure reported by the authorities.
Iraj Harirchi, left, wipes his face during a press briefing in February
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Juan Orlando Hernandez, the president of Honduras, and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan who both tested positive in June.
The Philippine interior secretary, the Venezuelan oil minister, Ghana’s health minister, South Sudan’s vice-president, Pakistan’s parliament speaker and Spain’s deputy prime minister have also been infected.
In the US, several members of Mr Trump’s team have fallen ill, as well as two senators and several members of Congress.
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator tested positive on March 19, after talks between Brussels and London had been postponed. He returned to his post just under a month later.
Other British MPs who have contracted Covid-19 are Matt Hancock, Nadine Dorries Kate Osborne, Tony Lloyd and Lloyd Russell-Moyle.
Prince Charles has contracted the virus as has Monaco’s Prince Albert II.
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