Royals In Retreat Amid Covid-19 Chaos

Princess Charlene tells YOU about Prince Albert testing positive as the queen goes into isolation

- Nici De Wet

A DISEASE that spares no one – not even royalty with all the powers at their disposal for protection and safekeeping.

This was driven home when Prince Albert of Monaco recently announced he’d tested positive for Covid-19, the first head of state to contract the virus that has plunged the world into chaos.

Albert (62) is being treated in the Pink Palace by a team of specialists from the Princess Grace Hospital, while his wife, Her Serene Highness Princess Charlene of Monaco, and five-year-old twins, Princess Gabriella and Prince Jacques, hole up at Roc Agel, the family’s country home in France.

Albert will be reunited with them once his doctors have given him the all-clear – and in the meantime, Princess Charlene spoke to YOU about the reality of the situation.

“My husband is doing well and is in good spirits,” she says. “The children are healthy and fine. This can happen to any family.”

She’s adamant she doesn’t want to play up her own situation. “Everyone’s going through the same thing,” she says. “It’s a very distressing time for everybody and we all have to practise self-isolation and social distancing.”

Albert opened up about his diagnosis to America’s People magazine, describing his symptoms as “flu-like but mild”.

“I’ve had a slight fever and a little bit of a cough. I had a runny nose the first few days – that was the first sign. I’ve felt a little stuffed up but that’s it.”

Albert (62) says he decided to be tested anonymously as he “didn’t want to be treated differently to anyone else”.

“There are cases more severe than mine which needed to be tested, so I didn’t want them putting me on top of the pile.”

He could have picked up the disease from “a number of people”, he adds.