Australian singer Anthony Callea took to Instagram this week to share his “really scary” COVID-19 experience.
“I’ve never felt like this before in my life,” he admitted, after contracting the Delta variant.
The 39-year-old said he woke up Sunday morning in excruciating pain. “My head felt like it was about to combust,” he wrote. “My throat, well I have never felt pain in my throat like that before, it was like someone stabbing me right in the throat!
“My chest was tight, I felt as though I was about to burst my ear drums and my body overall just felt like it was shutting down.”
Callea took a rapid antigen test and got a positive result. It was confirmed with a PCR test early Wednesday morning. His husband, actor Tim Campbell, tested negative.
Callea said he is currently on an inhaler “along with other meds and painkillers” and hopes he will recover fully. “I am slightly worried about my chest/lungs and throat,” he wrote. “Hopefully I can leave isolation on Sunday feeling ok and free of the virus.”
The singer said he is grateful he was double vaccinated. “Would hate to think what I’d be like if I weren’t,” Callea wrote, adding that he had been scheduled to get a booster shot on Jan. 3.
“It’s s**t and it’s real and it’s destroying lives,” he wrote. “Please try and stay as safe as possible and wherever you can, try and do the right thing by others.”
Callea was runner-up on Australian Idol in 2004 and scored a smash hit with his version of the Céline Dion and Andrea Bocelli duet “The Prayer.” Three of his six studio albums have gone to No. 1 on the Australian chart.