Reba McEntire Says She Actually Never Had COVID

Reba McEntire / Tik Tok

At the beginning of August, country music legend Reba McEntire revealed she and her boyfriend, actor Rex Linn, contracted COVID-19 despite both being vaccinated. During a Tik Tok live stream, McEntire showed fans around her house, and then said she had something to say and encouraged those watching to stay safe and take precautions against the pandemic.

“This has been a very hard year and it’s getting rougher again,” Reba said.”You guys, please stay safe. Wear your masks. Do what you have to do. Stay home. Just stay safe. Stay healthy. It’s not fun to get this. I did get it. Rex [Linn] and I got it and it’s not fun. You don’t feel good. We were both vaccinated and we still got it, so stay safe, stay home, and be protected the best you can.”

About a week later, Reba opened up about her symptoms to Variety. She told the publication she and Linn contracted the virus around July 17th. Since she had been vaccinated, McEntire thought she had a sinus infection, not COVID-19:

“I had been vaccinated, and thank God, because I only was laying on the couch for two or three days, maybe four. I thought I had a sinus infection, because I wasn’t down for the count, in the hospital. I just laid around and watched all my favorite shows on Netflix and Prime Video and Hulu.”

But then McEntire lost her sense of smell. That was the first thing that made her think “Wait a minute, maybe I have COVID, the Delta variant.”

McEntire said it came as “a shock” to her when she got tested and found out she had COVID-19. She recalled how a friend of hers, Red Steagall, contracted COVID-19 in December and was so sick, he had to be hospitalized. Even though McEntire didn’t feel the best while she had COVID-19, she never needed to go to the hospital like Steagall did. Now that over a month has passed since she was sick with COVID-19, She said her recovery is going well and she’s “feeling great.” She was also happy to share that her sense of smell has returned.

A week after that interview, the country legend is now revealing that she doesn’t believe her illness was COVID at all.

She appeared on Nancy O’Dell’s Talk Shop Live, where she said, “I did say that I had COVID but when I got tested my antibodies — it came up that I had not had COVID.” Reba added that she seemingly had a false positive COVID test.

“I had my antibodies from my vaccine,” McEntire told O’Dell. “So I had all the symptoms, so I was kinda probably — I did get tested, you know the test that I had and it said that I had it but then the nurse that came and tested me for my antibodies said that I probably had the RSV virus.”

RSV, or Respiratory syncytial virus, is a more common respiratory virus that has similar symptoms as COVID, but it is not as deadly.