Shania Twain recalls ‘very dangerous’ battle with Covid: ‘In the end I had to be air evacuated’

‘It took several days to start building up any antibodies at all,’ singer said

Inga Parkel
Monday 30 January 2023 16:19 GMT
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Shania Twain has opened up about her “very scary” bout with Covid, for which she had to be “air evacuated” to hospital.

During the pandemic, the 57-year-old country-pop singer and her husband Frédéric Thiébaud were living out of their Geneva, Switzerland residence when Twain caught Covid pneumonia.

“It was progressively getting worse. My vital signs were getting worse... and in the end I had to be air evacuated,” the “You’re Still the One” singer told The Mirror in a new interview.

“My husband was freaking out, to be honest,” Twain remembered. “He was really panicking because he was the one having to pull it all together.

“He spent hours and hours every day on the phone, trying to get an air evacuation coordinated, trying to get a bed lined up, as there were none, checking my vital signs. It was just a real nightmare for him.”

Once Thiébaud secured a bed and scheduled an air evacuation, Twain was flown to hospital.

“It was like science fiction,” she recalled of the experience, adding that it “felt like I was going to another planet or something. It all kind of happened in slow motion”.

Shania Twain (Getty Images for ZFF)

“It took several days to start building up any antibodies at all, so it was a very dangerous time and very scary,” the Grammy-winning Canadian artist said.

“I made it through and I’m just so grateful.”

Twain explained that her fight with Covid served as inspiration for her new song “Inhale/Exhale”, which appears on her forthcoming sixth studio album Queen of Me.

“I was inspired that I still had air in my lungs,” she said. “It’s a song of ­gratitude and appreciation.”

Queen of Me will be released on Friday (3 February).

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