After struggling with severe COVID-19 symptoms for almost a month, DJ Jazzy Jeff is officially virus-free. On Tuesday (April 14), the legendary DJ spoke with Tamron Hall about his Coronavirus experience.
“I am blessed to say that I feel great right now” he told the talk show host.
Jeff remembers telling his wife he felt “a little achy, like I’m coming down with something,” before spending the next 11 days bedridden.
“[I] went home, got in bed, and almost don’t remember the next 11 days after that,” he reflected. “[I] wasn’t eating, couldn’t taste anything, couldn’t smell anything.”
At first, his symptoms were misdiagnosed as pneumonia.
“[My doctor] wouldn’t test me for COVID-19. They gave me a flu test, then gave me an x-ray on my lungs and told me I had pneumonia in both my lungs, which terrified me to death,” he revealed. “I came home and was on very heavy antibiotics and had an extremely rough, literally 10 to 11 days, before I really started to kind of come out of it.”
Prior to testing positive for COVID-19, Jeff had played a number of shows in Australia, Hong Kong and finally Idaho, which is where he believes he contracted the virus. He also came into contact with his 91-year-old mother, without knowing he had Coronavirus.
Now that he’s in the all-clear, Jeff hopes people will take the pandemic seriously.
“I had a friend send me a video of a basketball court and there was easily 100 people there, and it brought tears to my eyes,” he said. “It’s very important to make people understand how dangerous this is. You don’t realize you’re getting something [and] taking it back to your grandmother.”
“So, I felt like, if I can play some music, make people dance in their kitchen and not go outside, then that’s what I need to do,” he concluded, referring to his Instagram Live parties.
Watch Jeff’s entire interview with Hall below. Also, for more of his Coronavirus experience, tune in to his Instagram Live chat today (April 15) at 1 pm PST.