Brian May says he ‘perhaps made the wrong decision’ to attend gathering where he thinks he caught Covid-19

‘It seemed like a safe situation,’ Queen guitarist said

Brian May has said he “made the wrong decision” to attend a mask-free social a gathering where he may have caught Covid-19.

The Queen guitarist has tested positive for the virus, sharing the results of his lateral flow test on Instagram.

He said he is feeling “truly horrible” and that it’s like “the worst flu you can imagine” before revealing how he believes he caught it.

May told his Instagram followers that he attended a friend’s birthday meal with his wife, former EastEnders star Anita Dobson, with a small group of friends, thinking they were “in a safe bubble”.

“It’s kind of ironic for me,” he said, explaining that the couple have been “incredibly careful” over “the past 20 months”.

He continued: ‘Then last Saturday [11 December]. 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 [lateral flow test] which says you’ll be negative on the morning.”

May said “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”.

After quoting Professor Chris Whitty’s advice from earlier this week, in which he instructed the country to “decide what your priorities are” due to rising Covid rates, May said: “We did and, in retrospect, perhaps we made the wrong decision.”

Brian May and Anita Dobson both caught Covid after attending social gathering (Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images)

“It seemed like a safe situation,” he said, adding: “You have your negative tests, so what could possibly go wrong?

“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.”

He added: “You really do NOT want it messing up YOUR Christmas.”

May said that eight people at the party tested positive and that his lateral flow test took three days to show the positive result.