Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg believes that she may have contracted coronavirus and has been self-isolating at home with her father, actor Svante Thunberg.
Thunberg says that they both started having symptoms after a recent train tour of Europe together and have both been in isolation for the last couple of weeks.
The Mail Online reports: They were travelling in Europe before lockdowns were imposed by many governments across the continent in a bid to halt the spread of the virus.
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In an Instagram post today, Thunberg said she suffered shivers, a sore throat, a cough and felt tired after travelling with her father from Brussels.
The Swedish 17-year-old said in a video published by the New Scientist today that her father had ‘more intense symptoms’ such as a fever and that she has now recovered.
She said: ‘For the last two weeks I have been isolated and then I got the virus.
‘I came home from central Europe and then I isolated myself from the beginning, because I thought I might as well as I’ve been on trains…and so I don’t want to put anyone else at risk.
‘But then I started feeling some symptoms after a few days. But the important thing is that I didn’t basically feel that ill.
‘At the same time my father was feeling much more intense symptoms.’
Thunberg said in her Instagram post that she self-isolated in an apartment away from her sister and mother after noticing symptoms 10 days ago.
She added that she wanted to raise awareness about how easy it was to transmit the infection without realising.
The campaigner said: ‘I didn’t basically feel that I was ill. It could be that I was feeling unusually tired, I was coughing a bit.
‘That is because I’m not in a risk group, I didn’t get it very seriously. That also is very dangerous because you don’t know you have it.
‘If I wouldn’t have been for my father getting it at the same time and much more intense than me, I might not even have noticed it that I was sick.’
‘Many people don’t feel symptoms at all, or very mild symptoms, but it can be contagious.
‘That is something I want to communicate, that many people don’t feel symptoms at all, or very mild symptoms, but it can still be contagious. So you have to really practice social distancing whether you feel ill or not.’
On social media the teenager called on young people to protect groups at greater risk from the disease.
Thunberg went on to explain that in Sweden patients cannot get tested for COVID-19 unless hospital treatment is needed.
She added: ‘So of course I’m not 100 per cent sure I have got it. But it would have been very strange if it would have been something else, because it just fits very… especially with my father’s reaction, it’s exactly fitting with the symptoms.’
