Brian May tests positive for COVID-19 after attending "safe" birthday party

Brian May has tested positive for COVID-19. Over the weekend, the Queen guitarist took to Instagram to share a post and pair of video messages detailing "Life After The Double Red Line."

"Yep. The shocking day finally came for me. The dreaded double red line," he captioned a photo of his positive test. "And yes - definitely NO sympathy please - it has been a truly horrible few days, but I’m OK. And I will tell the tale. PLEASE take extra care out there, good folks. This thing is incredibly transmissible. You really do NOT want it messing up YOUR Christmas."

“It’s kind of ironic for me,” May said in the video, explaining how he and his wife Anita have been "incredibly careful" and living "hermit-like in a way for the past 20 months."

He then went on to explain that they contracted the virus at a birthday party. “Last Saturday we decided we would go to a birthday lunch and we thought, well this is the last social function we would go to — not that we go to many anyway — we’ll chance it, everybody’s going to be triple-jabbed, everybody’s going to be with one of these things [a lateral flow test] which says you’ll be negative on the morning," he explained.

“It seemed to be set up very safely, but of course you kind of know you’re taking a risk and so we all went to the party,” he added before noting that, “in retrospect, perhaps we made the wrong decision."

“It seemed like a safe situation. You have your negative tests, so what could possibly go wrong?” he continued. “The new variant seems to be so incredibly transmissible that I’m not even sure that would have been safe – this thing is spreading at such an alarming rate.”

After detailing his experience with the illness, which he described as “the worst flu you can imagine,” and assuring fans he's feeling much better a week after getting sick, May reiterated the importance of getting vaccinated.

“This is not the response my body would’ve made on its own," he said. "It’s making this response because I’ve had three Pfizer jabs. And I beg you and implore you to go and get jabbed if you’re not already, because you need the help. I lost one of my very best friends to COVID very early on. In six days it killed him. It could’ve done me in the last six days but it didn’t because of the jabs."

He ended his message with a note of solidarity. “Don’t be scared but be cautious, because you don’t want to get this," May said. “Let’s all pull together to beat this damn coronavirus.”