1 Month After Symptoms, Sturgill Simpson Tests Positive For COVID-19

Sturgill Simpson / Instagram

Grammy Award-winning country singer Sturgill Simpson has taken to social media to reveal that the COVID-19 test he took on Friday, April 6 came back with positive results.

Simpson has released two albums before signing to a major record label. After he signed with Atlantic Records, he released his third, and first major release, in 2016 titled Sailor’s Guide to Earth. That album went on to win him a Grammy Award for Best Country album in 2017.

In a recent Instagram post, Simpson shared his story of attempting to get a test for the novel coronavirus in March, when he first began showing symptoms.

“This photo was taken at 9am on March 13th when my wife took me to our local hospital ER due to chest pains, fever, and pre-stroke blood pressure levels,” he wrote.

He described how he and his band were on tour in Western Europe for two weeks in January and February, before returning stateside to tour a few more weeks. On March 12, two days after playing a show in South Carolina, he “pulled the plug” on his tour and headed home to quarantine like most of the rest of the country.

On March 13, Simpson said he had his wife take him to the local ER because he was experiencing “chest pains, fever, and pre-stroke blood pressure levels.”

The doctor he saw told him it was “impossible” that he had contracted the virus because of “its extreme rarity and that it was not in western Europe” at the time he was there. Simpson notes that we now know that is not true. He was the first person in that hospital to request a COVID-19 test, and was denied.

The next few weeks, he spent quarantined at home with his wife and his symptoms went away, but when drive-thru testing became available in early April, the Simpsons went to get tested. On April 10, he received a call saying he had tested positive “after almost one month without any symptoms.”

The musician’s wife tested negative and while there is so much uncertainty he wrote, “All I know is I first felt symptoms a month ago yet Im still positive and contagious and now on quarantine in the dojo until April 19th.”

His biggest regret? Not building a bathroom in his at-home dojo. He wrote about his story to shed some light on the shortage of tests available.

See Simpson’s full post below.