Kodaline guitarist Mark Prendergast has said he had coronavirus and felt the onset of symptoms while at his parents’ house.
The musician was diagnosed after a test and believes he caught coronavirus two weeks ago while at Heathrow Airport.
He told Irish radio station RTE 2fm: “About 10 days ago I felt this very, very dry cough. I was in my parents house…
“It was quite obvious it was a new cough. It was very, very, very dry…
The gentleman that is @kodaline guitarist Mark Prendergast has tested positive for Coronavirus. He'll be on @RTE2fm with myself and @DoireannGarrihy after 8.30 x pic.twitter.com/4MtCOGeMOJ
— Eoghan McDermott (@eoghanmcdermo) March 24, 2020
“I’d never had a cough like it before… I was a little bit panicked. I just got up and left.
“Maybe three, four days later I got a fever that lasted for four or five days. Overall my experience wasn’t as bad as it can get. So I’m kind of lucky.”
He said of being at his parents’ house: “I didn’t give them a hug, just got up and left. I went home.”
The musician in the Irish band said it was “like a bad flu… You have no energy. You’re sleeping for about 12 hours each night”.
Prendergast said he took paracetamol, which helped, and drank around five litres of water a day.
At one point, after several days on the sofa, he went for a run but it was a “terrible idea”.
He had to “lie on the couch for two hours and could feel this tightness in my chest”.
Prendergast added: “I haven’t seen my dad since March 12. Nobody in my circle has shown symptoms yet… It’s a horrible waiting game really to see if people around you are sick.”